Flame willow

[BuckSutherland]

Anyone here have experience with flame willow?? One of the local NRCS offices is selling bundles of 10 bareroots for $18. They 18-24". I am assuming I should cage them and put a weed mat and mulch on them. How do I get them to turn into one of these big red bushes??? Do I need to plant several bareroots in the same cage or can I just plant one and it will sucker and turn into a bush??


Looks like they could add some great color and quick screening. I'm sure my wife would love to have some cuttings for her winter pots.

 

[trampledbyturtles]

Tried a bunch without much luck.

They are in the white willow family.
So a few soil considerations.

Mine mostly fail due to rabbit and deer browse. They regrow from the base every year. But they don't stand a chance trying to get eastablised in an sort of existing cover.

 

[H20fwler]

I love that stuff! The look is just cool.
Going to mix some in with my road screen ROD and silky or whatever kind of willow it is that the deer go nuts over and I have along the road.

 

[BuckSutherland]

Sounds like the cage is mandatory. Do you guys think I can plant just one bareroot and it will turn into a nice bush or should I put multiple bare roots into the same cage?? I'd like to get several started and hopefully a few years down the road get some cuttings.

 

[H20fwler]

Either will work. Willows bush out good pretty fast, next spring you would be able to take a lot of cuttings off them. If you leave your cutting long 2' or more they do better, I plant mine in grass and weeds and they can get above the competition faster the taller they are at planting.

 

[Telemark]

I would just plant one per cage. They frow fast enough that you don't need more than that. Generally they will grow bushier if you cut the stems back in the winter. Don't cut them too low, about a foot high should be fine. They should behave similar to ROD.

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

Willows typically grow roots pretty easily, so you should be able to fill up your entire cage with just one seedling. Bend a branch or shoot down to the ground and cover part of it with dirt. The willow should grow roots where it is covered with dirt, then it should send up vertical shoots from that point.

I've done that frequently with red osier dogwood and willow should grow even better using that technique.

 

[BuckSutherland]

^^^

I planted 25 ROD last spring and put them into small 4' tall cages. I'm gonna have to try that this spring. A few grew some limbs out of the cage and the deer already browsed them. I was gonna shove some cuttings through the weed mat on those this spring. I'm hoping the browse promotes them to bush out. I have also located a few native ROD that I would like to get weed matted and protected this year. Those would be a great for experimenting with your method. My shrub game has been nearly non existent up to this point. Been focusing all my work so far on conifer bedding, oak trees, switchgrass and saw work. My ultimate goal is a THICK coniferous property with first class bedding, browse, and semi loads of acorns and some apple trees. I want nothing to do with food plots. I've been apprehensive about fruit trees in bear country.

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

Once my ROD was waist high and pretty thick, I would pull that one branch down and cover with dirt as described above. At that point I would pull the cage off the original tree and move it a few feet over the new section so it was protected from browse. You could repeat this indefinitely and end up with a quite a wall of shrubs in a few years. I've had decent success even without caging, it works much better with a cage.

I'd be really surprised if this procedure didn't work well on willows as well.

 

[SD51555]

Once my ROD was waist high and pretty thick, I would pull that one branch down and cover with dirt as described above. At that point I would pull the cage off the original tree and move it a few feet over the new section so it was protected from browse. You could repeat this indefinitely and end up with a quite a wall of shrubs in a few years. I've had decent success even without caging, it works much better with a cage.

I'd be really surprised if this procedure didn't work well on willows as well.

Crazy question, because I've seen this mentioned a bunch of times now, and I keep balking at it. So I have to ask.

If you bend over a live branch and tuck it back into the soil, what keeps the tension from flinging it right back out?

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

Crazy question, because I've seen this mentioned a bunch of times now, and I keep balking at it. So I have to ask.

If you bend over a live branch and tuck it back into the soil, what keeps the tension from flinging it right back out?

The weight of a shovel or two full of dirt/sod is enough to hold the live branch down. It doesn’t take much soil contact to get roots to sprout.

 

[Telemark]

Crazy question, because I've seen this mentioned a bunch of times now, and I keep balking at it. So I have to ask.

If you bend over a live branch and tuck it back into the soil, what keeps the tension from flinging it right back out?

A rock, if necessary.

 

[BuckSutherland]

I have a couple thousand 6" landscape staples. Just might be the quickest and easiest way to do this. The ones from Menards are China quality. After about a year they will probably rust away to nothing.

 

[H20fwler]

Once my ROD was waist high and pretty thick, I would pull that one branch down and cover with dirt as described above. At that point I would pull the cage off the original tree and move it a few feet over the new section so it was protected from browse. You could repeat this indefinitely and end up with a quite a wall of shrubs in a few years. I've had decent success even without caging, it works much better with a cage.

I'd be really surprised if this procedure didn't work well on willows as well.

Native posted up a thread on that a few years ago about hazelnuts. I’ve done it since with hazelnuts and it works great for transplanting to new areas.

 

[andrew]

I have a bunch I planted from my local SWCD they grow fast and love wet soil. Cuttings grow great from these also. I had some cuttings at year 2 that were 3 to 4 ft tall.

 

[H20fwler]

Planted 24 Flame willow cuttings mixed in with my ROD and Hybrid willow road screen last week over at our bigger farm.

Clipped a bunch of long cuttings yesterday and pushed them in as deep as I could into the wet soil along the west property line behind the spoil dirt hill on new pond to create a screen and some wildlife cover.

 

[andrew]

These were cuttings, they will be on there 3rd leaf this year.

 

[BuckSutherland]

My first year flame willows look great. I have them in 4 ft cages. They were about 24" tall when I planted them in April. Most are 48" tall now. The ones that aren't tall are bushing out nicely. Real good growth immediately. Should be a nice addition to the landscape. Looks like a great option for quick growth. They were pretty much just a single stem when they went into the ground.