Apple Trees from cuttings?

[sandbur]

This has been discussed before on the old forum and only Brad had any luck with it.

We have some new members. anyone with luck or helpful tips?

Does time of harvest of cuttings matter? Seal the tips with wax?

I have a swamp crab that makes great rootstock, but can not seem to get seeds to grow from it.

I have grown several trees from a sucker with a bit of root, but would like a dozen of the trees for rootstock.

 

[Neahawg]

Not sure about cuttings but I shoved the tops of last year's rootstocks in the ground, (15) and 2 grew into nice 1 year whips

 

[chickenlittle]

I've not been successful but I've read up and tried this. From my readings, best success would be taking hardwood cuttings in late fall. Dip the cuttings in liquid rooting hormone. Tougher ones can be scarred to the cambium for an inch or so from the bottom. You can do short, high dose or longer, lower dose hormone dips. Then you stick the cutting into a rooting medium that is kept warm (45 to 70F) while the tops are allowed to stay cold and dormant. Medium could be moist sand/peat mixture, well-drained, not waterlogged. You check the them periodically for callousing and rooting after which they can be moved to pots or planted out.

The ones I did I kept in my garage in an insulated storage tub and a heater cable in the medium. I had trouble managing the moisture and have no idea what the temp was maintained at. Mine all rotted before I got rooting. I intend to try again as I have some rootstocks that are supposed to propagate decently by cuttings. I should have enough wood to do it next winter.

 

[yoderjac]

This has been discussed before on the old forum and only Brad had any luck with it.

We have some new members. anyone with luck or helpful tips?

Does time of harvest of cuttings matter? Seal the tips with wax?

I have a swamp crab that makes great rootstock, but can not seem to get seeds to grow from it.

I have grown several trees from a sucker with a bit of root, but would like a dozen of the trees for rootstock.

One option might be grafting. At a grafting class I took, the master grafter teaching the class said that when he was young and they ran out of rootstock, his father would send him out with a shovel to dig up roots. They would then graft scions to those roots.

Another technique he talked about if you want a tree grown on its own roots is to take standard clonal rootstock produced in stool beds and graft to it upside down. You graft a long scion to the bottom of the root stock rather than the top. You then cut off the top of the rootstock and plant the tree with rootstock upside down and the graft well below the soil line, The clonal rootstock sustains the scion long enough for the scion to produce its own roots. Eventually the clonal root stock dies since it is upside down. You end up with a tree growing on its own roots.

Since apples root so easily, I would expect that air layering would work well with them as an alternative.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[chickenlittle]

If you can get several more suckers, starting a stool bed would be an easy way to propagate more rootstocks from this crab. But you can get to a stool bed by grafting. Jack mentioned one way but you can just graft and plant the whip laid over. You pin/stake it to the ground at multiple locations where the scion will root. You want to choose a rootstock that has different colored bark or leaves so you are sure which is growth from rootstock or scion. I just planted Bud490 on M7 and M111 like this. Like B118, B490 has red bark and leaves so i can sort it out from shoots of M7 and M111. I also have Bud490 on B118 but I'll use that tree for Bud490 for cuttings to root like your initial suggestion.

 

[Merle Hawggard]

I grafted enterprise on an mm111 sprout then moved it that fall to the farm. Planted it below the graft so hopefully I'll get a full size tree.
And I also shoved the cut off tops from my bench grafts last spring in the ground as far as I could and got 3 free trees. They were all antonovka, none of the b118 tops made it, but at just 5 of those, compared to 15, they may root just as well.

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[sandbur]

I grafted enterprise on an mm111 sprout then moved it that fall to the farm. Planted it below the graft so hopefully I'll get a full size tree.
And I also shoved the cut off tops from my bench grafts last spring in the ground as far as I could and got 3 free trees. They were all antaktova, none of the b118 tops made it, but at just 5 of those, compared to 15, they may root just as well.

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Did you give those any special care?


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[Neahawg]

Did you give those any special care?


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I got two to grow and nothing I didn't do for any other tree such as water during periods of no rain

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[Merle Hawggard]

Did you give those any special care?


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I didn't use any rooting hormone on them. The only thing I did different from my grafted rootstock was I watered them most every day. I didn't flood them, but kept the ground around them moist.

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[TreeDaddy]

Im still not over "Merle Hawggard" not being your real name.....

Whats next? No Santa?

bill