Propagating Fiddle Leaf Figs- Part 1

I love fiddle leaf figs! I have heard they made very hardy indoor house plants and I just love the way they look. I love them so much, I wouldn’t be unhappy having one in just about every room of my house.

The problem? They are not cheap! You can get a really small seedling for around $20, but most medium-sized plants range anywhere from $60 – $160. And considering how many of them I want, $20 a piece isn’t really a viable option either. So about a month ago I decided to try to propagate them.

Let me preface by saying that we were lucky enough to have 3 HUGE fiddle leaf figs planted in our backyard before we bought it. So we’ve got some figs to work with. This is a shot of our fiddle leaf figs. They are way too big to transplant and bring inside – no we don’t have 20-foot ceilings.

But with so much plant to work with, I thought I’d try my hand at propagating! I am no horticulturist, but I have heard that some people have luck putting clippings in water to get roots started. So I tried that.

I cut a pretty big clipping because I thought that if I could get it to sprout roots it might be better to start with a larger plant. However I have also had luck  with just a single leaf sprouting large amount of roots over the course of a few months. Unfortunately, I didn’t follow-up with care and maintenance on that little leaf and he didn’t make it in his pot once he was relocated. This time I took 2 of these clippings and put them in vases and filled them with enough water that the stems were submerged about 3-4 inches up the stem. I’m hoping that maybe a larger clipping will be a bit hardier than the small single leaf clipping I tried before. I kept them on my kitchen table which is about 4 feet away from a large south-facing window. So they have a good amount of filtered indirect sunlight throughout the day.

Here’s a photo of the 2 clippings in their vases:

Since planting them just a little over a month ago, I have changed out their water a few times to keep it fresh and I have added 2 tablespoons of this plant food that I just happened to have sitting around:

This stuff came with my AeroGarden that I got for Christmas last year. (The best thing for growing indoor herbs and veggies)

After exactly 1 month of being in water, I already had root buds!

This was the smaller clipping after 1 month:

And the larger clipping after 1 month:

I’ll keep you posted with the progress as they continue to grow. Here’s to hoping they will one day look as good as this one!