Anyone have success planting a tree this way?





I've never tried it

I do it all the time with willows. Works like a charm.

I was under the impression though that down here, there is only a handful of tree species that this method works well on.

never have

Don't know about spruce but it won't work on any of our southern yellow pines.

With the exception of willows and elderberries I can't think of many tree species that readily root from hardwood cuttings. Hazelnuts can be propagated by stooling and is the way they are produced in the nursery trade. Stooling is cutting back an established tree to encourage root suckers and then piling sawdust up around the stump so that the suckers root into the medium.

There are likely other trees that stooling would work with.

Air layering is basically the same process except instead of putting soil around the roots, you select branches off the mother tree peel bit a bit of bark and surround it with a ball of soil. After some time, roots develop and you cut the branch below the soil ball and plant the ball. Lot of fruit, nut and ornamental shrubs can be grown that way.

Have only done azalea, but have done a few hundred.

Air layering is a darn good way to propagate roses if you're so inclined.

In the nursery trade, the only way that I ever had any success rooting conifers, was to take the cuttings after at least two or three hard frosts in the fall. Wound the base of the cutting and then treat them with the strongest indobuteric acid that you can get. Plant them deep in a cold frame and don't disturb them for two years. This resulted in 10 to 20% success if you were lucky, and depending on the species that you were working with.

That's sounds incredibly complicated with dismal results

I might try it on aspen

https://nativetreesfromseed.com/grow/tree-recipes/aspen#:~:text=Aspen%20doesn't%20often%20produce,aspen%20grows%20readily%20from%20cuttings

I take hundreds of elderberry cuttings annually. Have recently got into fig cuttings as well. I've had great success with air layering roses and blackberries. Tip layering is a good option too.

Osage Orange ie: Hedge Apple, were commonly used as fence post's due to their natural rot resistance, and many of those post's took root and grew leading to "Hedge Rows", and wind breaks.

My recent red osier dogwood cuttings have started sprouting in the 5 gallon pail of water, so at this point I'll wait until ~mid April to plant them.

My red osier dogwood cuttings from this winter are doing amazing in a 5 gallon pail in the house. I'm not sure when to plant them outside

Did they leaf out in the house?

I had good luck taking aspen cuttings from new growth and just sticking in the ground. That is, every place that the deer didn’t or couldn’t get to them to eat them.

I also did a bunch of willow that way as well. I just cut a bunch back the previous year so I had a ton of new shoots to clip and plant the following year.

Neighbor has commercially for two generations.
Some (cedars) are easier than others (rhododendrons).
His one partner has a fortune invested (Penn State U).
Any plant I show him, he IDs it.
Those guys hate rodents including deer.

Have seen cut willow wood sprout in rain, hint try willow water.

It is an everyday job of maintaining temp and moisture.
50 some degrees, boiler lines under beds.

Know another lady that did orchids.
Much hotter $$ environment, and tough.

I been trying ground layering Jap Maple with not much luck.
Trying for two trees that do not get large or make much mess.

Yes

The last couple weeks my red dogwood cuttings in the 5 gallon pail aren't doing so well. Maybe I need to get 'em in the ground before they die. They were looking fantastic a few weeks ago. I lack experience w/ cuttings.

AJE what you are experiencing is not uncommon. The cuttings themselves retain enough energy to put on a flush of new growth. This can easily be views as "doing great" when they are using their stored energy to push out buds & leaves while not actually putting out roots. I'm a strong advocate for rooting hormone. If I'm going to put in the effort to take cuttings, I want to give them the best possible chance to survive. When I take cuttings that already have leaves, I typically trim all the leave off except for 1. Also, smaller cutting tend to be more successful for us (depending on what we are cutting) 4-6 buds is all that is usually needed.

Is rooting hormone just a root stimulator? I have root stimulator in the garage that I bought from a place that I bought apple trees from years ago

Thanks.
I may not know til next year if my red osier dogwood cuttings succeeded. They did develop some roots prior to planting.
Everything went droopy though, after doing superb.

1 thing I like about cuttings is ya aren't out much if they sometimes don't work.

Is this the rooting hormone you all are talking about? I saw it at the store today

I cut some elderberry limbs in early March, made 18 plantings from them. Every one of them has growth starting.

Anyone ever try cottonwood or popular.

Cottonwood is easy to propagate by cuttings with rooting hormone. Cottonwood grows very quickly here. It makes good butts for axe throwing and nice wide sheeting for barns. I've never tried poplar, because we don't have any near me, that aren't planted.

Elderberry, honeysuckle, raspberry, grape, lilac and willow have been the easiest for me to root without rooting hormone. Peach, blueberry, hazelnut and pear work at low levels, with rooting hormone in my experience. Cottonwood, black locust,, mulberry Osage Orange, roses and cottonwood are pretty easy with rooting hormone.

Keith

Thanks!
I cut some today and will try to get them to root just in water. Will it work I don't have root hormone application.

The instruction for spruce are exactly how we root azalea.

Anothah question is propagate in water does the water need to be place in sun or inside a building which would be darker?

I would use root hormone on the cottonwood cuttings, put them in a soil less potting mix, tent over them with clear plastic and place them where they only get indirect sunlight.

Cottonwood does grow very easily from seed too. The people caddy corner to me on the state highway have cottonwood trees in their front yard and any disturbed soil I have has a good chance of getting cottonwood seedlings growing in it, when the cotton is blowing around.

Keith

In water inside a building with a good window exposing the sun (if you don't stick them straight in the ground right away). If you want to get fancy I suppose you could use a grow light.

AJE >> thank you.

Any of you ever try it on sand plums?

Domestic plums are fairly easy with rooting hormone and pencil sized cuttings. I've never tried rooting sand plum cuttings, because I don't have access to any.

Oklahoma University has a PDF on sand plums.

https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/print-publications/hla/sand-plums-for-home-and-commercial-production-hla-6258.pdf#:~:text=Sand%20plums%2C%20also%20known%20as%20Chickasaw%20plum%2C%20Cherokee,making%20jams%2C%20jellies%2C%20and%20wine%20from%20the%20fruit.

They recommend using a misting system to keep sand plum cuttings moist. I would plant a bunch.of cuttings, treated with rooting hormone and see how it goes. If you have long term access to the trees, it might be good to air layer them.

Keith

So am I wasting my time then? They were absolutely flourishing in the pail, then it was as if they ran out of steam & died or maybe just got confused & went dormant. They even had put out roots. I did get half of 'em in the ground while they were still flourishing but then they went droopy kind of like the ones in the water pail. I did notice deer already ate 3 of the branches off 1 of them.

I tried something new tonight. These are aspen cuttings

Let us know how they work out.

They looked great after about a week, all leafed out even..but then they drooped & appear dead in the glass now. I did a glass of maple cuttings the same day and they're doing okay though. Maybe aspen cuttings have to be from the root. My timing of cuttings might be off. The once flourishing dogwood didn't seem to work out, but maybe they'll come back next year (red osier).

Shorter cuttings would probably work better. 2 or 3 leaf nodes work best for me. Direct sowing into a moist medium works best for me. Water goes foul quickly in my experience, even with frequent water changes.

I have around 400 elderberry cutting going well now. I've been pinching off the flowers daily.

My catawba grape cuttings flowered and I didn't notice it quick enough. It set them back. I pinched the flowers late. Hopefully they start putting more energy into rooting now.

I sent Scott, 330-trapper around 30 elderberry cuttings and around 45 mulberry cuttings last week. I've never tried mulberry, because it's very common here. Mulberry is supposed to be very easy with rooting hormone to propagate. There's some wild trees I like better and 1 domestic one. I'm going to try to root an everbearing mulberry that grows up in a friend's corn crib. It has berries from May until November. I'm also going to try some very long mulberries that grow in some hayfields we harvest. I'm also going to try a friend's weeping mulberry. It's a beautiful tree that you can completely hide under the leaf canopy of, while standing up under it. It's like a green, curtain like umbrella. It's a male tree.

I have a pear tree that is sticking a branch to far into my driveway. I'm going to cut it off and try to root last year's growth. So far I have not had much success rooting pears. If I get a few viable trees from it, I'll be happy.

I am going to try to root common milkweed in sets of 3 in gallon pots to sell to monarch butterfly lovers. I get a lot of milkweed in one of my hayfields. It is not good for hay. I might as well make some money off of it.

Keith

Keep us posted how they are doing. I put a few varieties of trees in the ground a week ago will see how they do.

It seems my cuttings didn't do well.

The aeroponics cloner systems are supposed to have near 100% success rates at rooting cuttings from trees in anywhere from 3 to 5 weeks, so they can be planted in soil. I plan on purchasing one of the larger systems to do just that.

Keith

I've rooted willow branches by just sticking them in the ground, last one is 10 feet tall now, Something I read is if you don't have rooting hormone powder, soak the cuttings in water that you have had cut up willow twigs in it. there's a natural rooting hormone in willow water.

Stick with it- Red Osier Dogwood is one of the easiest to establish. There's probably a lot of methods that can be successful- I just stick with what has worked for me. No larger than pencil diameter, minimum of (4) nodes, scrape the bottom (2) nodes off and pot with sand, keep damp and not in standing water.
This pick is from April 25, 2024, put in close to another 1,000 this spring- all of them had nice roots.

Wow, those are nice roots.

1st I've heard of that.

Aeroponics systems are fairly new. Plant cuttings are suspended in air, with the leaf end under grow lights, typically in a clear plastic tent and the base end hanging down where It's regularly misted with nutrient rich water, often containing rooting hormone. The mix of air, nutrients and hormone makes roots form very quickly. Plants, like basil, form enough roots to plant in soil in just 5 days. Trees like oaks, apples, pears, cherries and peaches can take 3 to 5 weeks to grow enough roots to plant.

Supposedly almost any plant can be propagated this way. I want to buy an aeroponics unit that holds 140 cuttings.

Keith

If you have an extra 1000 of those cuttings, I could find a home for them😉

Looks like EagleEye traded a deer hide for a pair of gloves, I had a pair like that.

This is a really good post for a variety of reasons, so many of us (myself included) have focused on the marketing hype of Hidey Holes, Kill Plots, Food Plots, etc. lush 1/4 -1/2-acre big buck buffets. If you walk onto a property where young successional timber management practices are in place, there's a natural selection of highly nutritional herbaceous forage everywhere. Understanding that whitetails are ruminant selective browsers, and their intake and metabolism differs by season makes you pause to try and understand a 365-day nutritional strategy. I shifted my focus to stock piling winter feed, including browse species; I plant a lot for forage brassicas and bulbs and Red Osier is a great winter source with heavy snow winters, I also love aspen clear cuts pictured below and a mature forest provides roughly 120-200lbs of forage per acre vs. young successional of 2,500-3,000 lbs. per acre.

You're a wise man Mark

This is a very good post with lots of thought behind it.


I've always thought that food plots are a waste of land if your concentrating on deer for this exact reason.
Its just like Ag fields, at times they are magnets for the deer, but most of the year they are food desserts.
Deer will eat a particular plant at a certain time only. The size of that time window may vary but no one plant will feed a deer year round.
The more variety the better, you need woody browse for the winter and foliage in the summer.

I see that my apple trees are ignored most of the year, then for a short time in the fall they are targeted heavily. We can see one tree from our dining table. The deer will be there every evening for about 2 weeks. Even tho there are Apples still on the tree and on the ground they get pretty much ignored as there is another food source that has occurred that is of higher priority like maybe White Oak Acorns. All this depends upon what grows in your area. I have lived in areas that deer will not touch white cedar and other areas where deer browse them down to near nothing each winter.

If you have a small plot you may want to concentrate on a food source that attracts deer at the same time frame when your hunting. But you have to know or experiment with different foods till you find one that works at the right time. But if your food source can't compete with other nearby food sources you maybe better off concentrating on providing thick bedding cover.

Lots to more to attracting deer than just putting in a food plot.

Good points.

I asked the WDNR nursery what Wildlife shrubs of there's are best for deer. They emailed me kind of a vague simple 1 sentence cop out answer that all their shrubs are good for all wildlife.

Here's a good start for your area for deer and grouse:

American Hazelnut
American High Bush Cranberry
Red Osier & Silky dogwood
Ninebark
Hawthorn
Wild Plum
Juneberry/Service Berry

That's a helpful list.

It would be nice if the state nursery sold cuttings. I suppose they just aren't setup for it.

I'm going to try to locate some red osier dogwood cuttings.
I'm unsure when is the best time to procure/plant said cuttings

Around here, Red Ozier's have root sprouts all over the place you can dig up and transplant.

I do it wrong.
I take cuttings from willows, sometimes 3-4 feet long, usually in the spring. I either put them in mud, or put them in water until they root well. Then plant them.

they'll keep leaves for a couple weeks. Or grow leaves if I cut them right before they should put out leaves. But within 2-3 weeks, the leaves die and fall off. They look dead for a while until the roots start growing. Then leaves come back.

In 2020 I did some I started in a bucket.


I planted them late June, right before Kansas went to 100 F temps. But I burried a 1 gallon jug with each one, and ran a 1/4" tube from the sprinkler system to each jug. So when i watered the lawn, a burried jug filled with water beside each tree. Even newly planted, they were very happy in the 100 degree weather.



1 year later:


2 years later:


tonight:

If your gonna plant right into dirt, get some rooting hormone.

Do you mix it with water?

I bought some rooting hormone at the local farm store.

Auxin is the most common roofing hormone. If it's a powder, you dip the freshly cut and scored cuttings in it and then put them in soil, usually after poking a hole wit something else, so you don't knock the powder off. If it's a jel, you dip and plant the same way. I've only worked with the powdered Auxin.

Keith

The cuttings I planted last year appear to have failed. It wasn't for lack of rain. Maybe I planted at the wrong time of year.

What did you try cloning?

I have around 3000 cuttings growing now. I need to do some more still.

Keith

Red osier dogwood, basswood, maple, aspen & willow.

I've only ever did some willow, was pruning some branches and stuck a 3/8" branch in the dirt and forgot about it, darn thing took off....dug it out to move, lost most of the roots and replanted it, took off again, wife didn't like where I put it, (imagine that), re planted it, about 2" thick then, off it goes and is now 15'.....all that to say this, I don't think you can kill a willow, lol,

I don't have willow & am not sure I want willow, but I'd like to try other cuttings again, despite complete failure the 1st time around. Maybe I just need to get them in the ground instead of 1st putting them in a vase under a grow light. I maybe tried the wrong time of year. I tried numerous species.