This video is all about timing the critical move from a rooting tray to a larger container. Ross, the Fig Boss, explains that the secret to knowing when to "uppot" lies in reading the signs of the plant's top growth, which serves as a mirror for the root system below. A key indicator is root lignification—the process where young, fragile white roots "harden off" and turn brown, becoming much more resilient to handling. Ross also points out that leaf size is a dead giveaway: large, expansive leaves usually signal a robust root system, whereas small leaves with tight nodes mean the cutting needs more time to establish.
The second half of the video focuses on the high stakes of transplanting. Ross warns that moving a cutting too early often results in the soil ball collapsing, which can snap delicate roots and lead to the death of the plant. To avoid this "transplant shock" altogether, he advocates for the direct potting method, where cuttings are rooted in larger tree pots from day one. By waiting until you see roots peeking out from the bottom of the drainage holes, you can ensure the root ball is stable enough to survive the transition and continue growing into a healthy, productive tree.
00:00 Intro: When to Uppot Fig Cuttings? 01:21 Reading the Signs: Top Growth vs. Root Growth 01:51 Understanding Root Lignification 03:05 Avoiding Transplant Shock: The Direct Potting Method
All right fig lovers, this is Ross the Fig Boss. I got a great video for you guys,
because today I'm going to answer a really common question that I get,
which is, when do I re-pot or up-pot my fig cuttings? You're starting the rooting process,
you got some leaves, you don't really know how much roots is down there,
and also you're kind of wondering, well if I up-pot it, am I going to kill it? Am I going
to do it too soon? Should I wait longer? Well that's what we're going to talk about in today's
video and more about the rooting process. Please do me a favor, hit the like button right now,
hit the subscribe button, and share this video. I really need a little bit of help on this one,
because the YouTube algorithm is kind of punishing me for not posting in a while,
but we're back. We're going to be posting videos a lot. Thanks for watching, and now back to the
video. As you can see here, I've got a seedling tray. This is 72 cells, three inches deep,
standard size tray, and I had a lot of cuttings in this tray that we just stuck in here as a little
bit of extras, tester cuttings, cuttings I didn't really care about, just to see what would happen.
That way we could answer this question really well. And so I've examined a lot of cuttings here,
taken the up out of their cells. We're about to start the up-potting process by putting them into
these tree pots. So we have a really good example here of cuttings that should be up-potted and some
that really shouldn't. Now I think you guys can probably tell the difference between the cuttings
that are still in the trays versus the cuttings that I took out of the trays. And you can see
there's a huge difference. Even if you couldn't see the roots, maybe you weren't rooting them in
clear plastic cups like some people do, or the fig pop method, or even rooting them in a clear
jar with water in it, you can just tell with enough experience looking at the top growth,
roughly how much top growth there should be that will then correspond to the root growth. When the
roots turn brown, the roots will start to kind of harden up. And it's almost like the same thing
here with the top growth. The top growth goes through the process of lignifying. Well, so do
the roots themselves. The roots go through a similar lignification process. They start out
as white, they're really bright, they're very easily damaged, and then they start to harden
and become much more stable for the cutting to have a solid root system. So we want to kind of
have that hardening process happen, not only on the top, but also down at the bottom. One of the
other major things is actually the size of the leaves. The size of the leaves will give you a
good indication that there is roots below. So the larger the leaves, the better off you probably are,
and you'll have root development. The smaller the leaves, you can see here that, well, there's really
not a whole lot of growth. The nodes are rather close together and the leaves are rather small.
What we don't want is something like this, where we take it out of the cell and then there's barely
any roots attached, or we take it out of the cell and then that whole clump of soil that was there
breaks apart and falls apart. Maybe some roots break off in that process. This cutting, I'd be
very lucky if this actually turns into a tree. So this is why in the past I've talked about other
rooting methods, like the direct potting method, where you just take your cutting, you stick it
into a larger pot like this, and that way you don't have to touch it. It fully roots out into the size
and we don't have to risk our cutting dying during this transplanting process.
