New to propagating

Good Morning yall    I am newer to gardening and I ordered some rooting powder   I want to try and propagate some plants  where to start    I wanted to pick yall brains and tell me the easiest things to start   I am in zone 6b in Illinois

Jim Cowger wrote:Good Morning yall    I am newer to gardening and I ordered some rooting powder   I want to try and propagate some plants  where to start    I wanted to pick yall brains and tell me the easiest things to start   I am in zone 6b in Illinois

Good morning Jim!

I'm in a similar climate - what are you trying to propagate?

I'm no expert, but might be able to help.

Nothing special just wanting to start and learn how to do it  ultimately I want to get fruit trees, but gotta figure out how to get the scion wood to start them on.    Just wanting stuff to put in the garden orchard area that will give my family food.  Just looking on idea and what beginners have luck with

I don't have much experience beyond planting seeds but I'm going to try rooting some cuttings from my Desert King fig tree. I just tried grafting apples and plums for the first time this week. It was fun. We will see if they take.

The figs are supposed to be easy but I too am interested in other easy things to root. I have a lot of blueberry bushes to experiment with but I don't know if they are considered easy.

Easy to root shrubs in my experience have been goji berry and elderberry.  The goji's were grown from purchased cuttings and required a bit of coddling at first but the elderberry was pretty much stick them in a pot in a shady area, water occasionally and forget about them.  Brambles are supposed to be easy as well, but I usually just dig up new starts where the tips of the canes have rooted.  My suggestion is to experiment.

I have no experience whatsoever with grafting, so absolutely no help there.

thank you  I have some elderberry on my property  I will give it a shot

Jim Cowger wrote:Nothing special just wanting to start and learn how to do it  ultimately I want to get fruit trees, but gotta figure out how to get the scion wood to start them on.    Just wanting stuff to put in the garden orchard area that will give my family food.  Just looking on idea and what beginners have luck with

There are lots of communities here and on Facebook for trading scion.

We're getting late in the season now - but this season and 2022/2023 winter could be a great time to plan on 2023 spring after cultivating connections!

I just ordered 6 fig cuttings and some rooting hormone.  Ready to get a head start on figs (I didn't plan to buy trees til next year, and this puts me in the same place but for 1/10 the price if it all works out), interested in how the experiment goes.  The only propagating I've done before this is houseplant water propping.  

Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of The Reference Manual of Woody Plant Propagation by Michael Dirr and Charles Heuser. Some plants simply do not propagate via cuttings, while others require getting the seasonal timing just right, so it's nice to be able to quickly look up that info in an authoritative source before wasting any time, bed space, rooting hormone, etc. The book is organized by species, and it also has all the info you need to propagate by seed.

Also for rooting cuttings, a misting bed with a propagation timer will greatly improve your success rates, and it's pretty much required for rooting certain species. For the timer valve, you'll need something that can do minimum run times of seconds (not minutes), with unlimited start times (so that you can set it up to mist for like 10 seconds every 10 minutes, a common interval for propagation beds). Probably the most-bang-for-your-buck timer valve on the low end of the price range is the Dig 710AP, which has served me quite well the last several years.

Locate your propagation bed in a warm space with plenty of light, however your prop bed should be shielded from direct sunlight. And for the rooting medium, 80 mesh coarse white silica sand works quite nicely (the "builders sand" they sell in bags at Home Depot and Lowes). With the white sand, it's easy to see and pick out leaves or other plant material that falls off dead cuttings, which can go moldy if left in the propagation bed (you don't want mold in your prop bed).

With the right setup, your success rates with cuttings can jump from like 3 per hundred to like 97 per hundred.

I started my very very small scale rooting adventures with sand in a plastic washing up bowl with holes drilled for drainage. I was not focused on particular things to root I just took cuttings from everywhere I could!Mike McGroarty on YouTube was my initial inspiration, he is a great keep it simple teacher. Growing a from cuttings is his life!

I have never lived above zone 8, but I do not believe it matters, propagations is the same. I may have more warm weather, but you can root in six weeks most plants.
Seeds & transplant are started indoors, grafting is done in dormant season & air laying take six to ten weeks.
So you should be able to root one or one thousand cuttings in eight weeks.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTVGyD_baZU0y-63OHb68tw

I like this guy, Mike Kincaid examples everything & he is in North, do not know what zone.
He does fruit trees & flowering plants, but rooting them is much the same.

I like Abe's advice.
Mold is a big issue.
I haven't been successful. Trying again this year. I'm glad you posted the question!

Elderberry is so easy to grow, you can just put a stem in water & it'll root.

Mike McGroarty is a great reference.  But super easy are Elder and any willow which as has been said will root in a jar of water.  Easiest is soft wood cutting which are obtained after they have put on at least 4-6 inches of new green growth.  Locust will grow oh so easily from seed (my Black Locust trees planted from seed about 6 years ago are easily 20 foot tall).  Raspberry and blackberry: you can bury a bit of stem and get whole new plants...or just wait and they will do it themselves.

Mulberries are almost bulletproof when it comes to rooting from cuttings.

If you don't want giant Mulberry trees that drop purple staining fruit everywhere there are dwarf varieties.

stick the cuttings in a pot of any potting soil, keep them moist and away you go.

Look up Jan Doolin on figbid sales board for dwarf mulberry cuttings. Her Jan's Best are dwarf and they and the others she has are some of the best quality cuttings I've ever received.
the cuttings I got from her were big fat ones and took off even faster than usual.
Mine aren't old enough to confirm this yet but Jan's Best is supposed to make a ton more fruit than the usual ones.

https://www.figbid.com
Lots of fig cuttings here too.

Also look up the figpop propagation method. It works well.

Tree Collards aren't fruit but are delicious greens, unlike their cousins they don't have  oxalic acid in them which is the taste most folks don't like about greens.
The Tree Collard Project for cuttings, she has good cuttings and instructions.
Another one that will go if just stuck in a pot with potting soil and kept moist.

Mike McGroarty has a lot of good propagation videos for those with and without mist systems with lots of detail and explanations of why, here's one:



A lot of people have different fruit trees in their yards and will often let you take cuttings or fruit (seeds) if you ask.
Not all seeds come true, if that matters to you, and trees from seed take longer to fruit but can have more mature wood grafted on to them to get fruit sooner.

Asking on a local oriented Facebook page, local garden swap or the like can lead to cuttings.

I've had unusually good luck buying cuttings on Ebay and Etsy. Inexpensive too.
As the old weasel clause goes...your mileage may vary.

Some good reading on deciding which tree crops would be Tree Crops by J. Russell Smith. He advises to go with the ones that need no spraying like Mulberries and Persimmons. The book is public domain now so available for free. Soil and Health library has it.

Willows root EXTREMELY easily, if you just want something to live and grow…. and to experience the joy of having multiplied your plants.

And geraniums, and roses.  

The cautions on any rooting hormone I have ever seen, have scared me off the commercial stuff, but willow exudes compounds that promote rooting.  When I have wanted to root something I thought might be reluctant, I put willow cuttings in the same sand.

It’s a puzzle about the medium, sand of a medium grit seems to stimulate root formation, but as noted above, it sort of falls apart on transplanting.  I have tried mixing clay into water, then the last couple weeks before transplanting, use the clay water for watering, and then transplant when the medium is on the dryer side.  It was unclear whether that was any improvement over plain sand.

I have also rooted in a bucket (or glass) of water.  Then taken the cutting and its blob of smelly roots and put it straight into soil.

I like rooting in a glass of water best because I can see the progress of the roots.

And, there’s rooting a sweet potato in a glass of water too.  I let the poor thing sit on the counter top for a few weeks until there’s subtle  evidence of growth at the eyes.

Start with soil blocks, watch this Jim Kovaleski video for how to:  

Radishes, bok choy, beets among lots of others, watch this Roots and Refuge video for ideas:  

Zone isn't the only thing that matters for long term plant survival. Soil characteristics and weather patterns can be an issue (I have a long spring and a cool summer, but I grew up with a short spring and hotter summer, and things I grew there, struggle here, but supposedly I'm in a "warmer" Zone). So if you try a plant others say is "easy" and it doesn't work: 1) do more research as your timing may simply have been off
2) try some different plants, or different varieties, or slightly different techniques
Thanks for the references people have posted! I've requested the library buy the book suggested up-thread as my region is food insecure - a fruit tree on every front lawn would go a long way to helping with that!

In addition to the excellent suggestions above, currants of any sort are extremely easy to propagate.  Literally just cut of a twig and stick it in the ground.

Blackberry! Not a tree, but propagate on their own.
Will grow just about anywhere and usually a good berry producer.
They send out vines that will droop to the ground. Stick the vine in the ground and wait. When it develops roots you can cut it and move it to a new home.

Jim Cowger wrote:Nothing special just wanting to start and learn how to do it  ultimately I want to get fruit trees, but gotta figure out how to get the scion wood to start them on.    Just wanting stuff to put in the garden orchard area that will give my family food.  Just looking on idea and what beginners have luck with

A scion has to be grafted, on a stock and you do not use rooting powder to do that. But it sounds like you want to plant lots of stuff without buying individual plants from a nursery. [And frankly, I can't blame you!]
So depending on what you'd like, I'll go from easy to hard, starting in the spring:
1/ the easiest thing to do is to start from a "volunteer". a small white pine, a yearling of an oak, hazelnut, maple, elderberry... Check what grows that you'd like to have in your neck of the woods. I harvested a bunch of maple leaves last fall to mulch my whole garden at least 6"deep, and I think I may have a lot of baby maples coming up this spring to plant in my forest.[The red oaks are all dying of the blight, so this is more for a "replacement forest".].
2/ Assuming that you planted a good apple tree not quite deep enough, [I've done that a lot] you may have a lot of suckers. In the spring, you would have last year's growth sticking out plus some healthy new tissue, like a bud. Cut it as low as possible and see about rooting the whole thing with the rooting hormone, or, if you do not have rooting hormone, chop a willow finely and add water. Wait. [b]You now have "Nature's rooting hormone": The juice[/b] is high in salicylate/ aspirin. that helps rooting.
Next year, you will have a tree you can graft, perhaps even with a scion from the same tree.
3/ We are coming to the cuttings. In late winter when you prune, you can just stick last year's growth in a planter or small bucket with good potting soil. I've rooted a number of black currants I'm looking forward to plant this year. You have a second window of opportunity in the Fall of the year, after the leaves fall off. I have elderberries that I'm planning on: they root very easily if you make sure to keep a bit moist [like any cutting BTW]. I went to the garden and I can see some promising buds looking at me from last year's growth. You may want to make sure it is at least long enough to have a couple of 'nodules' [where the new growth will start from.] Make sure to not plant it upside down!]. Put the bottom nodule underground: You will get roots from that spot. The top bud will grow in a regular plant. If sturdy enough, you can transplant in the Fall or wait until next Spring.
4/ All the brambles will also root easily: I have a bed of raspberries and they did sucker something awful. Since they also had some roots attached, I treated those like a transplant [Cut close to the Mother, even if you must dig a bit to free the roots].
5/ With Spring upon us as we are past mid March in zone 4b, this is the time when you can find some classes on bench grafting. It is not free but it is a lot cheaper than buying a whole new tree. Plus you will gain a lot of knowledge. They will have you buy the stock and the scion and will coach you on how to mate them successfully. It was about $10 for the stock and I can't remember for the scion, but quite affordable.
6/ If you have the acid soil for it and fairly abundant water, you could go for blueberries. The first year, I planted my whole blueberry plant super deep. Like I made a serious mound of soil so that you could only see the tips of the plant. the following year, I was rewarded with 4 sturdy plants that didn't cost me a thing. [Be careful, some plants are patented and you can't do that.]
7/ Unless you bought a grafted grape [which is usually what folks buy], you could also learn to layer your plant. I have a few 'wild' grapes. They will give you quite a pucker, but I don't care: I'm planting them along a fence and I want 'something' to grow there. I think of it as a "sacrificial" plant: Birds will rush to these , while I will cover [and keep] my regular grape. It is good and in accordance with Nature to let the wild critters have some of  the fruit of your labor. I also have wild mulberries [yes, in zone 4b!] in July-August. I won't bother to shoo the birds away: they can have those if I can have the wild cherries [of which they are equally fond!]
8/ All brambles can be layered: After they grow their stem, bend it back to the ground, nick the stem where it goes under the soil. You may need a stone to keep it from springing back up, or a couple of landscape cloth staples.
9/ your County Nursery extension may have some trees [but the choice is limited and you need to buy in quantity [25] sometimes.] They will usually be small and you can plant them with a dibble.
10/ re-reading your post, you seem to be especially on the lookout for scions.  There's an app for that, as they say: https://growingfruit.org/t/scionwood-sources/3346
You may just want to refresh that by googling:
https://www.google.com/search?q=where+to+procure+scions+in+Illinois%3F&oq=where+to+procure+scions+in+Illinois%3F&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l2.9278j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Abe Coley wrote:Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of The Reference Manual of Woody Plant Propagation by Michael Dirr and Charles Heuser. Some plants simply do not propagate via cuttings, while others require getting the seasonal timing just right, so it's nice to be able to quickly look up that info in an authoritative source before wasting any time, bed space, rooting hormone, etc. The book is organized by species, and it also has all the info you need to propagate by seed.
With the right setup, your success rates with cuttings can jump from like 3 per hundred to like 97 per hundred.

I agree, Michael Dirr is the number one propagation in the USA.
I own  four books on propagation & Dirr has the most informed book I have ever read or heard of & I have been rooting cutting for fifty years.

here at UVPCGG Utah Valley Permaculture Classroom Gardens Food Forest www.permaculturedesignschool.org in Utah, we do yearly Prunning and Cuttings to Plants workshops past 7 years. See more videos on our Facebook Group Utah Valley Permaculture Classroom Gardens

Jim Cowger wrote:Good Morning yall    I am newer to gardening and I ordered some rooting powder   I want to try and propagate some plants  where to start    I wanted to pick yall brains and tell me the easiest things to start   I am in zone 6b in Illinois

Jim, I think it is great that this is something that you want to learn.

I always get such a wonderful feeling when I stick a twig or something that I trimmed off a plant in a glass of water only to see roots forming in just a few days.

I have never used rooting powder though from what dear hubby has said the rooting powder does help.

Since you are wanting to learn more about this, here are some threads you and others might enjoy:

https://permies.com/t/138033/willow-water-natural-rooting-agents

https://permies.com/t/130063/Rooting-cuttings-bag

https://permies.com/t/44604/rooting-hormone-organic

Abe Coley wrote:Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of The Reference Manual of Woody Plant Propagation by Michael Dirr and Charles Heuser. Some plants simply do not propagate via cuttings, while others require getting the seasonal timing just right, so it's nice to be able to quickly look up that info in an authoritative source before wasting any time, bed space, rooting hormone, etc. The book is organized by species, and it also has all the info you need to propagate by seed.

Also for rooting cuttings, a misting bed with a propagation timer will greatly improve your success rates, and it's pretty much required for rooting certain species. For the timer valve, you'll need something that can do minimum run times of seconds (not minutes), with unlimited start times (so that you can set it up to mist for like 10 seconds every 10 minutes, a common interval for propagation beds). Probably the most-bang-for-your-buck timer valve on the low end of the price range is the Dig 710AP, which has served me quite well the last several years.

Locate your propagation bed in a warm space with plenty of light, however your prop bed should be shielded from direct sunlight. And for the rooting medium, 80 mesh coarse white silica sand works quite nicely (the "builders sand" they sell in bags at Home Depot and Lowes). With the white sand, it's easy to see and pick out leaves or other plant material that falls off dead cuttings, which can go moldy if left in the propagation bed (you don't want mold in your prop bed).

With the right setup, your success rates with cuttings can jump from like 3 per hundred to like 97 per hundred.

100% on Michael Dirr

His books are considered the bibles in the industry.

This may not be basic level/new to propagating, but it might be workable. so here goes....

You can create a mist system that does the usual 10 seconds every 10 minutes quite inexpensively now.

There are inexpensive short interval digital timers capable of this now, whereas in the past it was the $3-400 dollar intermatic clock or similar... or nothing -

https://www.amazon.com/BN-LINK-Period-Repeat-Intermittent-Interval/dp/B0184CG9K0/ref=sr_1_10?

https://www.amazon.com/Century-Digital-Programmable-Packaging-Security/dp/B00MVF16JG/ref=sr_1_19?

You'll need to cut the 120 volts down to 12 or 24 so you can use standard irrigation valves.
Doorbell transformers are often a good inexpensive choice for this.
I had a high fail rate on the transformers made by the irrigation suppliers for this purpose.
You may even have an old transformer from past electrical gear laying around.
Make sure the milliamp rating is up to the task, the listings for the valves will tell you what that should be.

I use all the dig brand press together compression  fittings and .700 OD poly tubing stepped down to 1/4" where needed.
Cheap, simple, quick.

There are a ton of misters available online. You do want a fine mist. Here's a good inexpensive sort -

https://www.dripworks.com/superfine-misting-nozzle-5-pack

While we're talking about Dripworks (last link) they are far and away one of the best suppliers for any irrigation stuff. Competitive pricing, big selection and fast shipping.

As per suggestion last post, look up Mike McGroarty's stuff. He has a ton of vids and infos on mist and non mist propagation.
One of the women on the member's board there has supported herself for years just rooting a LOT of cuttings ongoing via Mike's container (non mist) technique.

hi, i don't know if this is too simple for you, but you can propagate a lot of cuttings in water in a jar. herbs are especially good for this as is elderberry. our county extension agent offered a class in grafting apple root stock and scion wood, it was fun and nice to have a couple of experts there to guide us. perhaps you could check if your agent offers any classes. we are members of mike's backyard growers as shown in the video above. he has bunches of videos on how to do propagating. berry plants are also very easy to do. just remember that trees take years to produce, so get started soon. it is the time of year that many places are already sold out of specific root stocks. good luck to you

Automatic misters are great if they’ll meet your requirements….

I’ve never used one, but often reuse a clear plastic produce bag (several times!) to maintain humidity.  I open and close the top of the bag, tighter or more open as needed.

A friend of mine’s grandmother taught her how to propagate roses by putting the cutting in the garden soil where it is to grow, covering it with a quart canning jar.  This was a method used in Wisconsin.  Not so sure it would work in an arid alkaline situation…. unless careful consideration given to placement