Rootstocks and Seedlings: Summer Field Notes

some seedlings sizing up, siberian peaches and manchurian apricots have been taking off in large plug trays

i'll post a nursery tour later in the month, some of the wild flowers are still small and look like an empty tray. how much to grow, who knows I'm just trying a bit of everything with the seedlings. my flow is to start...

wolf willow seedlings, a native shrub with silver blue leaves

grape seedlings, from valiant, a small blue grape hardy in zone 3

It's almost as cold hardy and vigorous as wild grape. so the seedlings would work for any context like...

narrow leaved echinacea, a native perennial wildflower

started from seed this spring, here they're three months old growing in some large plug trays. not sure if they will flower the first year, I've read it's possible...

northern white cedar, in it's second year

larch seedlings in their second year, from locally collected seed

they were small plugs this spring, and should get up to a size I can plant out by the fall. This set will probably be reserved to plant around here, but larch seem to grow quickly, easier than...

manchurian apricot seedlings

I started these in april in the greenhouse, here the batch is transplanted into large plug trays and starting to size up after three months. Our apricot seed is locally...

wild plums, by september they'll developed a red and yellow color and I'll collect them for seed

This tree is a 25-30 year old seedling plum, in a small town backyard. all that I can say about it is that the fruit and leaves are typical for prunus americana, and given that hybrid cultivar plums have little pollen...

missouri giant, clove currant

Ribes odoratum. super tastey fruit, it's up there with crandall. this one is a new addition to our collection, and we'll start to propagate them next year. I might even collect...

wild saskatoons are ripening, earlier than them cultivar ones at our neighbours which were still green this week

next to these bushes I've grafted apples onto the top and those photos are in this set. it's kind of cool to consider the rootstock...

northern white cedar, stratified in march and then plated in the greenhouse

last year I put them into small plug trays an this point and they were 2-3" trees by end of the season, one more year in larger plugs or pots and you could plant them out. conifers I've found, are...

blue spruce seedlings

hundreds? cold stratified for one month then planted into this pot in the greenhouse, here they're about 4-6 weeks from germinating. should you plant them like this, well you can if you're going to carefully pull them...

red elderberry, stratified a couple of months

the small seedling elderberry leaves have a different shape than...

haskaps, seedling from aurora

here the seed was stratified feb through march and then planted in the greenhouse in early april. just about ready to divide up into their own pots. The seedlings won't be exactly the same a aurora, which is a large...

jacob's ladder seedlings

this is the first year I've grown them, some will go into a bed or large pots where we can collect seed in the fall. this is sort of the plan with all the wild flowers, a project in progress to...

tobacco seedlings, about ready to pot up

it's almost july and I started these late, but the plants are fast growing and I'm hopeful they have time to flower and set seed before frost in september. tobacco seeds are tiny, several would make up a sand grain. I...

sea buckthorn seedlings, from seed I collected in the fall from a bush that was nearly thornless

I was kind of a treat just stripping the fruit off the small branches without finding the usual spines tipping every small branch. Usually when you collect sea buckthorn, it's just easier to prune some branches. The...

wild tobacco, a smaller leaved plant that matures at just a couple ft tall

last year I grew them out in small pots, they seem to do well in containers. here they're ready to divide up into transplants, maybe a little overdue - when plants are crowded and get leggy a good approach after...

mongolian spruce

all of the conifer seedlings are small and slow growing in the first year. I like to start them in pots, and at this stage...

tobacco seedlings started about one month ago in the greenhouse

they're a fast grow annual, even in our short 3-4 month growing season in southern MB these will get up to size and flower, and you can collect the leaves to you know roll cigars if you're adventurous. I like to grow...

northline saskatoon seedlings

stratified for three months, jan through march and planted in the greenhouse early april. they're small tree seeds so giving them a month or two in pots like this to size up before transplanting can work well. while...

wild grapes, cold stratified from nov through march so about five months in the fridge in some damp vermiculite, planted

in april. they're a good size to transplant now, I usually put 2-3 to a cell in our plug trays but singles are also ok. funny story I divided up any earlier batch in june and we actually got frost mid june here in...

garrington choke cherries, a selection with larger fruit, vigorous growth and large loosely spaced clusters

in the fall they're alright to eat off the tree, the later they go in the season the higher the brix, and despite the name chokecherries when ripe can be mild with low astringency, I suspect the name is related to their...

apples fruiting on wild saskatoon rootstock

a selection of apples grafted about shoulder high onto established saskatoon/ serviceberry, up high above the deer browse line. at three years old, showing good graft compatibility and precocity. is this supposed to be...

elderberry fruit, will be red or black by the fall

this is a seedling species unknown, but I'm watching out for selections of any black fruiting ones growing well in Manitoba. here we have amerian black elderberry (S. canadensis) - the usual suspects with a dozen...

pears shooting up from these root cuttings

ussurian doesn't do this as much as siberian crabapple, but it does and would make for so e cool bonsai. last photo is a bundle of plugs from last fall, yes you can leave plugs in the shrink wrap and just water them, the...

ohxf87 pear rootstock, you can propagate from softwood

in fact it doesn't stool very well, pear doesn't have the same adventitious buds along the root crown like apple. what this means is, if you chop these off and expect shoots you can hill up like the way an apple stoolbed...

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...

a few z grafts, you can see how on the larger rootstock it helps heal over the cut faster than a graft just off to one

size. the large one is an unnamed plug directly onto chokecherry, and the small ones are american wild plum interstems between chokecherry and black ice plum - a sandcherry hybrid I'm trying to root this summer...

nannyberry seedlings

tricky to grow because of the deep dormancy. these germinated after a short warm strat in early winter, and they seem to like to hold and stay dormant at this stage, I kept...

evans cherry seedlings

at the orchard where I collected these, there was a little variation between the evans trees, so it's possible they were seedlings, if that's true then I would expect these to have comparable large cherries. there's all...

mustang cherry plum, just about ripe I think the color would go a little more burgundy

this is usually just a rootstock, though the idea of growing out the seeds to evaluate for their...

wild plums, these ones are some mix of prunus nigra and americana

the leaves and fruit are in between. the seedlings will be good...

potting up seedlings, natives like silver buffaloberry (Shepherdia argentea), wolf willow (Elaeagnus commutata), a

collection of currants and gooseberries. experimenting with container nursery, most of the plants are in pots and plug trays for this year.. last year I would have them all in the ground, but I think for some species a...

potting up a plum tree on a mustang rootstock

it just worked out for our growing space and late spring grafting that this year all the grafted plums are in pots. what's interesting is the fibrous root system of a cherry plum hybrid stock seems to grow well in a...

northern white cedar

I've been germinating conifers in pots like this, and then transplanting into plug trays. it saves on greenhouse space and time in the spring, and lets you carefully water and take care of the seed through the critical...

white mulberry, finally got to try them

also first hand got to see healthy Morus alba trees growing in southern Manitoba, not just in a sheltered micro climate, in an exposed location in an orchard. We’re in zone 3 here on the prairies, and by most accounts...

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...

hardwood sawdust for stoolbeds

my wood shop has this pile from the dust collectors, aged hardwood a mix of walnut, cedar, oak and all kinds of exotics. at the bottom it’s ten years old, but the high eastern res cedar content keeps it from completely...

hawthorn grafted onto saskatoon

There’s an interesting overlap of graft compatibility in the Rosacea family between several genuses, pear and quince, saskatoon and aronia, hawthorn and apple, and I have to assume more if you find the right interstems...

rosa woodsii in full bloom

these spread with rhizomes and sometimes appear in my nursery beds so i’ve...

help wanted to ID this plum rootstock, cuttings from root suckers

It’s zone 3 hardy, few options right? Americana, sand cherry, mustang are the 3 I know of. Looks the most like americana, suckers like it.. but it roots super easily which seems different. Myrobalan isn’t hardy here to...

making a new stoolbed and topping up our b118 one started last year

the sawdust is aged hardwood with a high percentage aromatic cedar and...

planting out a bed of mustang cherry rootstocks

These should be large enough to bud in July. Our reserves of scion wood for many cultivars have been grafted out around the orchard, one reason to have an orchard next to the nursery - a ready supply of scion wood. This...

trying some succession in our nursery beds

we combined conifers in many of our beds with faster growing trees because they do well with some shade and need two years to grow before transplant. the River birch on the left will grow a couple of feet while the pine...

Mustang cherries for budding this fall

While around the orchard I like to experiment with rootstocks, the plum trees we’ll want to sell will be grafted on these. It’s a complex Prunus hybrid developed by a local nursery that has good compatibility with many...

Our zone 3 backyard nursery with the forest orchard behind it

slowly expanding it in all directions...

small white spruce sheltered by bark and budding out

Where you won’t be back to water in the bush, hide them on the north side of a log or stump to protect from...