Propagation by Cuttings: Summer Field Notes

black ice plums on this graft made just last year

larger than any other plums we have that fruited, I'm interested to see what they're like. also excited about this variety because it has Prunus besseyi in its parentage, so it flowered early, and made a prolific number...

a russian pear on its own roots

encouraged by success with ohxf87 last summer, a clonal stock that actually doesn't stoolbed well, but does root from softwood - I tried a few other pears this summer. The premise is that ohxf87 is zone 4 hardy, and...

a russian hybrid plum that seems to root vigorously from softwood, podorak st

petersburg. This one survived -40C last winter, which was a happy surprise, and was worthwhile testing its rooting potential because of its parentage. The cultivar isn't well known on the Canadian prairies, so it's a fun...

white nanking cherries

like the regular red ones, the same fuzzy leaves and quickly rooting softwood, but the fruit are ivory white. they're hard to track down, I was lucky enough to graft some out last spring, and now this june the flush of...

northern gooseberry, or smooth gooseberry

Ribes hirtellum. a native berry bush with almost no thornes, shown fruiting on july 20 and just starting to naturally drop some fruit, a good sign that they're at the right stage to pick. I have a few of these...

toka softwood cuttings, a hybrid plum tree that has some cool traits, it's crossed with Simonii the chinese apricot

plum, done about a century ago by hansen in SD. it survives -40, grows plums that taste like bubblegum, its softwood can root and it grafts onto chokecherry. suffice to say it's been featured in my experiments with own...

year old haskaps

in the first season they get an established root system and grow just a bit from their initial softwood cutting, sometime six inches. this spring once potted up they take off and with good conditions will grow a foot or...

a first round of softwood, a little flaccid

its hot, and the cuttings are about a week early. turgidity can pick up under mist, it keeps your lettuce crisp in the grocery store. some cool ones in here, if they work - eurasia, toka, black ice, kyrgyz, bogataya. if...

manor cherry plum, two batches of cuttings collected one week apart

the first set are a good stage to pot up and move along into the next zone, they're forming a fibrous root mass - this is all you need to support the plant. in the second photo they're not ready, my usual rule of thumb...

northern gooseberry, Ribes hirtellum collected a few years ago from a farmyard in SK and now growing in the nursery

It's a native gooseberry species with few thorns. This handful of cuttings are at thirty days under mist in the greenhouse and stuck with a strong iba talc, a heavy rooting response - native Ribes seem...

goji berries have these attractive purple flowers all summer, they have this unusual perpetual growth through the whole

season into late fall where the vines have all stages of fruit - the flowers, green fruit and red ripe fruit. today I collected some cuttings a bit late in the season (july 8), usually june is better but now there are...

black ice plum, a western sandcherry hybrid

I hoped it would share the strong rooting potential in other chums - cherry plums as the common name refers to prunus besseyi hybrids like sapalta, opata, manor, new oka, dura etc - a collection of these hybrid bushy...

softwood season is what makes me love propagation

I build this greenhouse for it, and these not fancy benches ad hoc put together for every summer have misting nozzles going off all day. about my fifth year into it, there's a bit of magic in the suite of variables to...

benches of softwood are nearly full

I collect cuttings from mid June until around the summer solstice, this works better than july cuttings - if you can get them after this flush of growth, and before they begin to transition to semi hardwood that's the...

mock orange flowering later than most other trees

not common around Manitoba, cool to find a collection of trees to...

purple gooseberry

unknown cultivar, the original bush is at least 30 years old and thriving in full shade. the one in this photo is a few years old, it's crazy vigorous. after a hard prune it flushed out with a heavy crop of fruit and...

valiant grapes from hardwood collect in early spring, these were on bottom heat for a month in the root cellar,

then moved onto the mist bench to start hardening off. now at about six weeks they have enough roots to pot up. about half are going to stay in bins to root in bulk and I'll sort out the largest as bare root plants at...

indigo gem haskap, here a mature bush in a shady spot shows its growth habbit - a bit sprawling

some haskaps like to grow more upright and tall, this one is good if want on cover an area. I do trim it for cuttings and that keeps it a bit smaller, and if you grow it in full sun it's going to be larger and have more...

mist propagation, one of my favorite things

cuttings stay alive for a couple of months, the mist goes off for just ten seconds every 10-20 minutes over these benches. the fastest to root, maybe the currants can be just a couple weeks. I run this from june 7 - aug...

mustang, bushes planted four years ago to trim for cuttings

we've had lots of rain so the cuttings are big this year, 12" to too long I had to keep them 6-9" so they stick reasonably in the medium. 4000ppm iba, a bit of fungicide (secret ingredient in seems) and bottom heat on...

epsilon cherry plum, a happy addition to the collection here

to get this on its own roots - I was lucky enough to get scion wood over the winter. grafted onto wild plum, here on an interstem on chokecherry rootstock. the growth flushes out, I collect cuttings and root under mist...

Theissen saskatoon seedlings

a large fruiting cultivar, and a larger tree than the wild ones. while the seedlings aren't exactly the same as the cultivar, they should be very similar. saskatoon/serviceberry is notoriously difficult to propagate...

some plants are graded into a small not for sale size in the first year, chuyskaya sea buckthorn here getting potted up

and will probably grow a foot by the end of the summer. it's part of softwood propagation, most of these were sold out over the winter with this small tray held back. I think this cultivar is...

rooted softwood sizing up

the light green is new growth from the last 4-6 weeks. here our growing season slows down in sept, by next month they'll all be hardening off, we'll get some frosts and usually the leaves will drop by the end of oct...

I have a side quest to root plums as just a badass way to propagate them

benefits could be a healthier, longer lived tree. the last toka trees on their own roots were last century when Hansen was making crosses. I've been able to root it with some high degree of initial success, but plums get...

currants from cuttings this spring, I have a fun selection of new ones that will be large enough to propagate in 2026

this process of collecting material, rooting in and establishing a stock bed is ongoing. Some of these cultivars are going to take research...

Ribes cynobari, divaricatum, glandulosum seedlings from the usda

native currants and gooseberries from a very small seed this spring, taking off in these six inch pots, now into stock beds. next june we'll be able to...

ohxf 87 softwood rooted heavily after a few weeks

pear rootstocks have been a bottleneck, so hoping this gives me some more supply. In Canada we just don't have access to bulk rootstocks like in the US, they're at least 6-8 ea and limited to mostly less cold hardy...

bei tang, a hybrid between cherry plum and apricot

happy to see that it roots, it wasn't a guarantee, a good outlook for propagating more. complex prunus hybrids are exciting because there are many possibilities, and with the sandcherry parentage it's just a few years to...

highbush cranberry can root from softwood cuttings, these ones at 35 days have some decent rooting

it's a bit sensitive to even misting because the cuttings are large, I try and take them with 3 nodes. about half rooted, but that was more set I think, some dried out, other pots had 100%. A tricky plant...

altaiskaya sea buckthorn, double flowering plum

the sea buckthorn were collected june 25, so a decent rooting response at around 3 weeks. double flowering plum is a nice surprise, this is the 3rd year I've tried to root it and with some tweaks to the settings it...

elderberries, haskaps ready to pot up

after about a month under mist just about all of the cuttings we did in june are rooting, I try and wait under they're at a medium to heavy rooting stage, which for me is a decent mass of roots 1/2 - 1" long. this is the...

sea buckthorn rooted at three weeks, this is about the stage where they can get potted up

these are on bottom heat, mist every 20 mins through the day, and an iba/naa mix with some fungicide, a recipe that's working better than anything else I've tried. but by far the easiest way to propagate these is the dig...

evans cherry and other Prunus cerasus hybrids can root from softwood, with some stronger iba and bottom heat to speed

it up. the same works for some plums. the trick is what comes next, get them to grow a bit and then harden off for the winter, still working...

currants at 3 weeks can be heavily rooted so time to move them into individual pots

these stay under mist and partial shade for about a week and will get slowly hardened off. too hot, sunny or dry too fast at this stage and you get crispy leaves. with some luck and a bit of fertilizer they'll resume top...

sea buckthorn softwood starting to callous after 10 days

I found an aqueous iba + naa mix works particularly good for these, AB testing last year had far for roots on our in house...

cherry prinsepia bush, Prinsepia sinensis an unusual shrub with tiny hooked thorns hidden in the branches, and a sour

fruit with trypophobic seeds. I collected seed from this stand last fall and got it to germinate, it does have a deep dormancy. trying out some softwood cuttings to see how they root. probably a good alternative to...

zone 2, an area for potted up softwood with less frequent mist

about a week in this side of the greenhouse and they're ready to move outside, on a cloudy day when possible. about the time they're ready to move growth is often starting to resume. to catch all of the long days of...

sapalta cherry plums, 4 weeks under mist with some bottom heat, medium strength rooting hormone

it's a hybrid with the western sandcherry, which is why it roots from cuttings so easily. more people should grow cherry...

Jostine, a cultivar of jostaberry which is this cool currant-gooseberry hybrid

gets me super interested in hybrid Ribes crosses. Jostine rooted enough to pot up, not quite as heavily as some of the Ribes nigrum and rubrum (black and red currants) but it's fast growing so I...

cuttings hardening off

rooted over a few weeks, potted up and moved to a shady area with mist on a different schedule, one min every couple hours...

often when you see new leaves the softwood cuttings have rooted

at 3 weeks into the season some of the earliest cuttings are ready, a small tug on them also indicates rooting. these are cherry plums, the succulent leaves desiccated but the cuttings are still in good shape, and after...

seems these leaves aren't abaxially pubescent

(fuzzy/hairy under the leaves), and when you crush them they aren't skunky.. there's a few indicators that it's Ribes americanum. but the flowers is more like the other one. a hybrid? takes a bit to grow out specimens...

softwood cuttings about 2 weeks into the season

think i'm just about done, it's better to do these in june and give the plants time to root and put on some growth. today was sea buckthorns with an in house iba naa mix. timed mist 15s every 15 mins, heat mats, shade...

collecting lilac softwood, this is the right time there are new shoots with a few nodes

they root in about 5-6 weeks under mist, faster...

elderberry growing in zone 3

this was my second winter with them, and even with a good snow cover all of the top growth wasn't alive in the spring, but maybe it's fine they easily regen from the roots. now that I know, will just plan to crop them...

trimming up haskap cuttings, this guy was hiding in the leaves

haskap, currant, gooseberry cuttings under mist

chicago hardy fig, overwintered in our root cellar

stock plants, i'll cut them back for softwood and hardwood material, second photo is hardwood cuttings started this spring. hardwood was a backup, had no idea if the fig...

I enjoy this process, softwood propagation season

the cuttings are starting to fill up one bench, over the next two weeks I'll take all the cuttings for the summer and fill a couple of 10ft tables, that seems to max out about what I can manage. the spacing is close at...

trying grape cuttings like this, in our root cellar where it's a bit cool and quite damp

dipped into some iba talc, a bit of cambium exposed, 2-3 node cuttings. last year through sheer neglect we had bundles of cuttings root in these conditions, but I wonder if I should move them outside and just keep in the...

common purple lilac, shoot extension is at the right stage for softwood

they can take a bit to root, but over the years I'be had good strike rates with lilac...

some early success introducing a few Prunus into tissue culture

this is the tricky part, an explant (cutting) from the field needs to be sterilized, at one week these ones are in good...

d’artagnan cherry from u of sask getting potted up

cuttings from june 19 are at the right stage to pot and harden off, cherries take a while. next up trying some things to get them to resume growth...

haskap starting some new leaves after rooting

This is a good result, if they can grow a bit through august then...

debbie’s gold apricot on it’s own roots

manchurian apricot has some rooting potential, maybe also for rootstock. does anyone stoolbed them? seeds are easier for sure but...

subculturing some american wild plum

first time trying this, will update if they grow and I was able to keep everything...

hollyhock mallow (think I have the ID right but google says they top out at 4 ft) this one is a large herbaceous

perennial, grows like a monster and covers the whole end of this raised bed 6 ft tall.. last year I tied it back with rope to keep the walkway...

canadian gooseberry, Ribes oxyacanthoides

stems full of fuzzy thorns. This plant set fruit last summer and there’s a tray of it’s seedlings growing, also trying some softwood. native species are great, I want to...

highbush cranberry, Viburnum trilobum at six weeks into rooting

I checked them for roots a few weeks ago, and in this batch about half were good and were potted up and the rest needed more time. Many plants root like this. Six weeks in the full batch rooted. On other years when I...

Chuyskaya sea buckthorn, a nearly thornless Russian variety

The softwood roots quickly, and they also spread with rhizomes and sucker, given a large bush the later might be the easiest way to propagate them. I did...

cherry plum cultivar new oka, well rooted after a month

I started some plants last year from scions, so from graft to rooted cuttings, into a bed for the year to make more cuttings the next spring.. I have maybe a dozen here going into pots. more next year,. it takes time to...

black nanking is a nanking x western sandcherry hybrid (prunus tomentosa x besseyi)

both of it’s parents root quickly from softwood, and it’s the same. here is a cutting...

highbush cranberry roots in about a month, that’s the easy part

trying a few things with these this year, like keeping them in pots and phosphorus fertilizer, the last couple of years only half over wintered. these guys and sour cherry I...

little cherry plum dropped it’s leaves but bounced back

probably from too much mist. I try and calibrate it for the day depending on temperature and cloud cover, we’ve been getting way more rain than usual and on those days the timed mist can be dialed back. some setups use...

black currants are fast and heavy rooting with softwood, here are well rooted cuttings of Tiben at 21 days

So this week I’m going through all the currants and checking them, anything at this stage can get potted up and then moved to a less frequent misting zone to begin hardening off. With that setup, I’ve also put them in...

IBA + NAA left, IBA talc right on cherry plum

I think left will quickly become a...

kinda cool that you can outfit a tissue culture lab off amazon

have a growing list of cultivars that just need to be propagated this way. will...

red elderberry had a stronger rooting response with a quick dip in captan before sticking

100% of the treated cuttings rooted in 21 days. 4000ppm iba talc / stimroot 2 powder, and the fungicide was a solution 1 tsp/ liter . The reference manual for woody plant propagation recommends this. Probably applies to...

haircut

all of my stock plants are getting trimmed for softwood. in the first year it’s just a few cuttings each, enough to make a stock block in a small bed. I could tc these plants but I’m going for max...

trimming softwood in my kitchen

you can collect cuttings and keep them in the fridge for a few days safely, and I find it easier to trim the leaves inside. it’s...

softwood propagation started for 2024

the mist will stay on until september. these new pots let me ab test hormones and...

goji berry rooted using two different rooting hormones, on the right using an iba+naa liquid solution was a much better

result than the usual iba talc...

plants started from hardwood at about ten weeks and grown under lights to get a head start

moving the last few bins into our greenhouse where they’re get...

from last july, this is why I’m testing different rooting hormones

on the left is a much more dense and fibrous root system starting, it doesn’t even look like the same plant. it’s an IBA NAA mix in aqueous solution, right is my...

own root plums are putting on way more growth than expected, this set is the earliest june cuttings

many plants have an ideal window of maturity / time for softwood, takes some experimentation to find out. A protocol is the details like timing, materials and methods to propagate plants, and specific protocols for many...

highbush cranberries are ripe

collecting seed for our nursery and also growing cuttings from these...

collected goji berries today, so cool how they ripen all summer

I have rooted cuttings from this bush, they’re tasty and large, probably...

prunus maackii, manchurian cherry rooted softwood from spring grafts

One of my goals this year was to use this two step process, and i’ve had some luck with a...

trying out jewel black raspberry cuttings from the canes that just fruited

not sure if they’ll root, but they were going to get pruned this fall anyway. I didn’t want to use the new canes coming up, they still have a few ft to grow. Jewel grows quite a bit like a blackberry, where wyoming black...

temporary setup for hardening off newly rooted plants

every day or two I advance the trays forward until they’re into the sun and out of the mist. they’re also fertilized to help kick start some growth. given 1-2 weeks the small pots fill up with roots and some new growth...

own root hydrid plums, “toka” cultivar developed 100 years ago in south dakota

The bright green flish of growth after rooting is a very good sign that the new trees are healthy. I wonder how many of them have been grown on their own...

own root plum trees well rooted in their pots, hardened off and going into nursery beds

Toka is the best cultivar I’ve trialed so far for this method, but steadily finding more through experimentation. Some prunus is very hard to root, like americana just gives up and drops it’s leaves, maybe it needs the...

haskaps hardened off and going in the ground

these rooted a couple of weeks ago and had some part shade and gradually less mist, last move is into full sun a few days. if the leaves freak out and curl up and go brown then it was too fast, so slowly is better. signs...

green elf plum rooted cutting

It’s an old cherry plum bred in Saskatchewan. It’s a cross between manchurian plum and sand cherry.. P. ussuriensis x P. besseyi .. kind of awesome parentage for a tasty green plum, I would like to cross it with some of...

first sea buckthorns rooted this summer (seaberry)

Altaiskaya is a russian cultivar that’s almost thornless...

bunchberry rooted cutting, i think there’s a bottom node there

wasn’t sure if it would work, but they spread rhizomally. would like to get these...

same plant different rooting hormone

nanking cherry at 5 weeks. right is off the shelf iba talc, left is an in house formula i’m testing made from pure hormones in an aqueous stock solution. left is a stronger result the rooting is up the...

kuban comet asian plum softwood rooted

Took about a month, firm softwood cuttings 4000ppm iba talc some bottom heat. Own root plum trees are the goal, just takes some trialing to sort out the recipe. These and most other plum cultivars I root this summer will...

compartmentalization in an evans cherry cutting from a tray that was too wet, it was under a misting nozzle that drips

I’m showing the process of trimming and redipping in some iba talc - and the results. Also a bundle of cuttings from a tray at the right moisture level, all healthy an...

west african basil grows more like a perennial than other basil species, i made some softwood cuttings to see how

it roots under mist. Usually you can just use water, but not for this one. The leaves have this...

old homestead cottonwood cuttings from our 125 year old tree at our old farm

alpine currant from semi-hardwood cuttings at about three weeks

the fruit are cool range of red and yellow color similar to clove currant...

riverbank grape vitis riparia, super cold hardy, survives above the snow in -40

video is softwood cuttings rooted in two weeks under mist. #grapes...

kappa cherry plums

working on multiplying these hundred year old cultivars like sapa, opata, dura, manor, and some newer ones like sapalta and new oka. prunus names are funny, I’m also grow nadia, green elf and p. cerasifera which are all...

hey I got an apricot to root

own root apricots is one of my goals this summer since rootstocks that are cold hardy either have PBR or you...

organized taking softwood cuttings

bagged cuttings are fine in the fridge for a day, prep the leaves and print some labels before heading to the greenhouse. Chums are a good example where good labels are...

black nanking cherry rooted at 16 days

potting basil propagated from cuttings

my basil project this summer is to grow as many types as possible. they’re going into pots and spaced to avoid cross pollination for seed collection. i might have 20 types growing, many...

Virginia creeper from seed some time in March

they’re up to the ceiling and still in small 2.5” pots. I would say you can get plants the size the garden centers sell in a just few months from seed. They way I usually grow these is from softwood or semi-hardwood in...

more success rooting hybrid Japanese / American plum variety Toka

cuttings at 4-5 weeks had callous dipped again in 0.4% IBA and restuck in groups, what I’m starting to consider renovating a tray, added bottom heat for the first time this season. Rooting response has been good, the...

added some bottom heat to a few trays to speed up rooting, maybe this is a good strategy late in the season

So far this year I’ve had good success without any bottom heat. Our mist propagation started up mid June and will run for a few more weeks, we start to get frosts in early September so that’s a hard limit on getting new...

Toka plum rooted cutting

prepared black currant cuttings for mist propagation in our greenhouse

These are from a consort currant bush I planted twenty years ago, because it’s old and large there’s all kinds of new vigorous growth for cuttings. From this step they’re dipped in rooting...

these cascade hops are the first to show some roots in our mist setup after two weeks

Usually after there’s an inch or more if roots it’s time to pot them up and start to harden them off. I’ll wait for a few dozen to be ready before moving them, otherwise if starts to turn into too many small batches...

Nanking cherries (Prunus tomentosa) ripen here in mid July, and the seeds from this tree filled a bed of seedlings

we’re growing this year. We also had good results with softwood cuttings, they root quickly and heavily, and we have grafts of them growing on our wild choke cherries. Quickly becoming my favourite prunus to propagate...

Our mist propagation benches are filling up, there is an ideal time window around mid to late June that for this type

of propagation. There are lots of things that need to go right, and in 4-8 weeks we’ll have turned cuttings into new plants. Because the season is short here in southern Manitoba we need to do this with enough time to...

with some patience the pieces of a succulent will root, and they look cool when they start to grow #succulents

collecting wild red osier dogwood berries for seed

We have these growing from softwood cuttings and also planning seed beds this...

wild high bush cranberry softwood at 28 days under mist #propagation #backyardnursery

Nanking cherry harvest

Super tasty fruit from a tree I planted in 2004. Picked the tree over the weekend, so I guess these are ripe the same time as saskatoons...

Nanking cherries at three weeks rooted from softwood cuttings in our mist propagation

Wild cranberry, viburnum sp

flowering today. Thinking about propagating. #cranberry...