My honeyberry and seaberry propagation experiment

Hello every, haven’t posted much here yet but long time lurker and the knowledge I’ve acquired from this board is priceless! Thank you all.  With some cabin fever here in zone 5b with some 3 degree low days this week, I wanted to start a project but starting seedlings has generally gone poor for me when I start this soon and “jump the gun”... so inspired by some posts here, I’m trying some Honeyberry and Seaberry cuttings!  I took 5 each, one cutting from each of my different shrubs except for the male seaberry. I’ll attach some pictures if I can here.  In doing this I completely forgot to apply rooting hormone.... I am wondering if I should let it be or pull them up and redo it.  Any tips or critiques welcome, thanks!

I should have stated I’m a total novice at this and just following advice I’ve seen!  

One thing you could try is if you can find some willow trees in the area that you could harvest twigs from and soak it (I can't remember the recipe I followed as it was several years ago, but the web will tell you if Permies can't) and since you're already set up to water them from the bottom, just put the willow water in you reservoirs and it might help.

I've also read somewhere that having a "dark" pot is better, so covering the cups in used aluminum foil or similar might help. You could cover some and leave others as an experiment.

Good luck and keep us posted please!

Hey Jay - I was hoping to have the best of both worlds with solid cups outside the clear cups, but I can still lift them out to see if there’s any root / let them drain fully once in a while?  My in-laws have a willow tree - I wonder if the dormant limbs still have same qualities as fresh wood though.  I’m going to just leave them as is and if they all fail to root, I’ll know better next time.  I’ll update in 3 weeks or so with any visible results!

J Nuss wrote:I was hoping to have the best of both worlds with solid cups outside the clear cups, but I can still lift them out to see if there’s any root / let them drain fully once in a while?  

OK - that was a bit subtle - I didn't notice the yellow and blue cups. I'm not sure if the yellow ones will block enough light, but the blue ones might. It's amazing how translucent single-use (and even some multi-use) plastics are becoming as everyone tries to shave pennies off the cost/thousand.

As you say, let's see what happens in a few weeks. There are lots of different variations on "rooting" that can be attempted. I've not been terribly successful myself with many plants that others seem to have no trouble with. Time of year, light level, consistency of watering (I'm bad with that) etc can impact the survival percentage, and when I only have space for a few, I cross my fingers and hope. For whatever reason, I seem to do better with layering than cuttings.

For the first time I water them I was going to brew some worm tea and water with that - anyone have qualms with that idea?

J Nuss wrote:For the first time I water them I was going to brew some worm tea and water with that - anyone have qualms with that idea?

You might brew some hot and some aerated to see if the nutrients or the fungal/bacterial content is most beneficial or detrimental. Does it stimulate rooting or decomposition? Same with willow water.

Good luck J,
My experience is that honeyberries root very easily (they also seem to grow from seed quite easily too).  I just stuck short cuttings in a pot in general purpose compost outside and got 80 % or so take (winter temps here 0 - 10 deg Celsius and wet!).  This year I may just stick cuttings in the soil  near the parent plants and see how they do.
My seabuckthorn/seaberry are only in their first year so I'll see if they go through the winter before trying to proagate.  Actually if they look OK this yesr I'll try a selected cultivar....
Good luck!

I didn't have much luck with seaberry cuttings last year that I took while the plants were dormant. Hopefully you have better luck.

I don't advise watering with worm tea. Cuttings have very little ability to absorb water or nutrients because they don't have a root system. This is why the usual method is to mist them with water so it can be absorbed in through their bark. One of the reasons sand is often used as a medium is because it is nutrient deficient which means that the cutting is forced to establish a larger root system quickly. at helps a lot further down the track when you pot them out into soil.

If people are not having luck with seaberry cuttings, if you wait for a couple of years seaberry sucker from its roots anyway. You can dig these up, cut them off and you will have  a new plant complete with rootsystem  

I had success with honeyberry cuttings stuck straight into the soil in autumn. To suppress weeds I put down cardboard, poke a hole into it with a bit of rebar, stick the cutting in, and cover with woodchips.

Well, I think I learned a lot from that experiment!  I should probably try a roofing hormone next time, and it was way too early to start them if they were going to be rooted inside.

All the honeyberries don’t appear to have rooted yet, and half the seaberries look like they never did anything, but the other half are growing new growth and look happy, with definitive roots on at least one.... so I’ll get a new plant or two out of the deal anyway!

In the mean time I started a new project with peach and nectarine cuttings

J Nuss wrote:Well, I think I learned a lot from that experiment!  I should probably try a roofing hormone next time, and it was way too early to start them if they were going to be rooted inside.

All the honeyberries don’t appear to have rooted yet, and half the seaberries look like they never did anything, but the other half are growing new growth and look happy, with definitive roots on at least one.... so I’ll get a new plant or two out of the deal anyway!

In the mean time I started a new project with peach and nectarine cuttings

You will probably have better success taking a cutting going into dormancy in the autumn (fall) honeyberries flower so early I am sure that wood was putting its energy into producing flowers rather than roots.