anyone try to get fruit trees to root off a branch, I try it a few years back with no luck , just cut a branch off a apple tree and dip it in some stuff that supposed to help them root

Haven't done it in years, but , used something called Rutone (sp), then placed the stems in the fridge until spring. Plant them and guard them from rabbits and deer and whatever else is in your neighborhood. Tree tubes work well if you can keep the mice out also. Good luck.
Zookeeper

My understanding on apples, pear and other pome fruits is that they can be hard to root by cuttings.

I do know rootstocks are propagated by stooling.

http://www.suttonelms.org.uk/apple72.html

You might trying to mimic those conditions by heading back a limb then air layering the new growth.

Hazelnuts are commercially produced by stooling. As warrior says most rootstocks are also stooled so as to be genetically identical.

Even if you were to be successful in getting a cutting to root it may not develop a good root system. I do know that elderberries and figs are readily rooted from cuttings. Probably others as well. In Ecuador I knew an old retired Navy vet that planted a whole orchard of sweet limes from cuttings. I was surprised at that.

Most Apple trees, and lots of other fruit trees, are grafted to hardy root stock. You could graft the cuttings on to crabapple seedlings. Even if you get a cutting to grow, it won’t be hardy enough for Michigan most likely.

Interesting. I've never heard of stooling.

Stooling is also called layering. I make 100's if not 1000's of layered propagations each year. Mostly with blackberries, raspberries, roses, and more recently blueberries & figs. You can even layer above ground, aka air layering, using root pods or some other container to hold soil around the branch.
Remember Propagation like this is advanced gardening. It takes years to perfect techniques to be consistently successful. I advise folks to make more propagations than what you think you will need. This increases your chances of at least a few being successful. When taking cuttings, I always advise using a rooting hormone. Its cheap and helps increase the possibility of roots forming.

I have had luck in the past pruning my pear trees and putting the cuttings in a 5 gallon bucket of moist peat moss. I then got busy and set the bucket in a dark location inside my barn. As a matter of fact, I forgot about it for a month or so. When I remembered it, there pear cuttings all had sprouted copious amounts of roots.

I knew a longtime Maryjane grower, a client, that did that all the time. They called it cloning. Once they had a good strain that produced well, they wanted to keep that particular strain going. They just snipped off a sprig from the plant, dipped it into this material and it would generate roots within a week or so. Some of those plants looked like trees they looked 10-12 ft. tall in the photos I had seen back in those days. He had them in his apple and peach orchard.

Something about this didn't seem right, so had to think on it a bit, then remembered instructions on planting trees from a local expert. Root stock determines tree size. If you root the variety tree top, what you will get is a full sized standard tree. Any attributes of the previous root stock will be gone. Think the same thing happens if you plant a grafted tree with graft union below the soil line.

Apparently that is done to develop the common pear root stocks, which re 85% to 95% full sized trees. I've started a pear stool bed, but have no idea how that is going to turn out.

Quince understocks are widely used to produce semi-dwarf pears.

Am aware of quince, but have never been able to get my hands on any.

Rootstocks are selected for their in ground attributes or inferred traits to the scion.

Dwarfing is just one trait, suitability to certain soil types or resistance to endemic disease.

For instance while quince dwarfs pears it has poor to no resistance to firelight.

There are also some known incompatibleties between some cultivars and some rootstocks.

In citrus flying dragon trifoliate not only dwarfs but adds a small degree of cold tolerance.

This is the actual OHxF87 root stock and source I have for the pears. But they have not had any for past two years. Or at least are sold out when I have checked.

https://www.cumminsnursery.com/buy-trees/product-detail.php?type=rootstock&id=6215

I don't think any rootstock is capable of imparting fireblight resistance to the above graft-union cultivar. If there is such a rootstock it would greatly surprise me.

BTW, if anybody needs some quince rootstock I can supply cuttings this time of year that can be rooted with a mist bench or other good softwood cutting rooting situation. I get lots of quince suckers coming from one of the standard quince rootstocks that my quince trees are grafted to.

It can't but if fireblight works down into the rootstock usually through rootstock suckers you lose the tree. I was taught to cut all suckers.

I'd like to find some type of apple, peach, pear, plum, cherry or apricot that had half as much will to survive as this mulberry does.





That is growing in a gnarly crotch section of an ancient black locust tree. Likely as not, some bird dropped the seed with a seed coatingt of bird droppings (convienient starter fertilizer), where it found hope in a patch of dust in a deep crevice in that bark. That is about 5 feet above ground. Sent a root into the black locust tree, behind the bark layer. So a mulberry growing out of a black locust tree. And is producing.

We own and operate a fruit tree nursery business. As far as I know all the root stock is produced in the Pacific Northwest, Cummins is just reselling as far as I know. Prices are much better if you order directly from the growers. Though most have a minimum and if you arent putting in an order soon for next Spring most things will be sold out when you go to purchase. We have already ordered root stock for 2024.