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.