I thought I'd make another thread on plant propagation, since the one from last Spring, that was many pages long, was accidentally deleted when Trapperman needed more memory.

I'm rooting thousands of cuttings again this year including Remembrance elderberry, Catawba and other grape varieties, button bush, American bittersweet, black raspberry, kitty willow, red osier dogwood, a bunch of types of apple, 2 types of pear, Montmorency cherry, lilac, mulberry, Haskap (honey berries) and hazel nuts.

Some like elderberry, dogwood and button bush I'll just stick in soil.

The others will be going in a system with bottom heat to produce rooting. I'll have 2 pallets laying on concrete under an awning on my front barn. On top of the pallets will be an 8' by 4', 2" thick piece of foam insulation. On top of the insulation will be heating mats. On top of the mats will be 2 IBC totes, with the bottoms drilled for drainage, full of sand. The cuttings will be treated with auxin/IBA, which is rooting hormone. The bottom heat produces rapid callousing which progresses to rapid root growth. The tops of the cuttings need to stay relatively cool to prevent leafy growth, before the roots can support it. Indirect light helps with that too, which is why the cuttings will be under an awning.

This will be the first year where I do a whole lot of grafting. I'll be grafting named varieties of black walnut, English/Turkish walnut, heartnut, butternut and buartnut onto black walnut saplings I am growing. I am grafting che, a red oriental, seedless fruit, onto Osage orange saplings I am growing. I'll be grafting apple and pear onto apple rootstock I am cloning.

I'm going to use mostly hot pipe, callus grafting in the Fall. Basically I will run a heating element in a pvc pipe, that heats it to 80F. The graft union of the tree I am grafting will be placed on the pipe. The top and the roots will be left out in the cold, so they stay relatively dormant. The graft union will be covered to keep it moist and hot. The grafts should form heavy callous and fully take in about a month. Hot pipe, callous grafting has a much better success rate than regular grafting, as high as 95%, for hard to graft trees like walnut. I would like to graft about 2000 trees this way, so I'll make a lot of extra grafts.

I'm also going to attempt hypocotyl grafting onto walnut saplings, so that I have grafted trees I can sell this Summer. The hypocotyl is the short stem part of a seedling between the root cotyledons, the leaves that come out of the seed and the first true leaves. There's a narrow window after the tree first sprouts to graft this way.

The first of a great many of Remembrance elderberry clones I'll be making



Haskaps, semi thornless black raspberry, Italian plum, black walnut, elderberry and Montmorency cherry.



Compost.



Cold stratified, black walnut seed.



Planted black walnut seed.



I picked up a load of plastic pallets to use as nursery benchtop for $3.00 each.



Red osier dogwood conveniently growing across the street, I am going to clone.

Never done it before but just started putting some grapes in potting soil to give it a try.How often do you water ?Just put mine in the fur shed where they will stay above freezing for now.

I try to keep the soil always somewhat moist for the first couple of months. Just water when the soil looks and feels dry. Grapes are pretty forgiving. Close to 100% of grape cuttings root.

Keith

Looking good Keith. You got it down. You mentioned basal end "scarification". I think the preferred term would be "callusing". The heat @ about 75-80F causes a growth of cells which are precursors to root formation.

Good catch Carl. I'll fix it. Thanks.

I was scarifying seeds earlier and had it on the brain still. I meant to put this picture up too. There's scarified pawpaw seeds in 2 of the mineral tubs, where I scratched the seed coating with a file and hazelnuts, peach seeds and apricot seeds I scarified by removing the outer shell with a nut cracker.



Keith