Anyone had any luck rooting mulberry or juneberry cuttings?

We have an outstanding mulberry I would love to propagate. She bears clusters of large, delicious fruit for several weeks. I'd love to root cuttings if that's possible. Is it? Or should I stick to grafting?

We also have a phenomenal juneberry/serviceberry/sarvis tree that I'd like to clone as well.

I suspect Juneberry would take well. I know that in addition to being grafted mulberry is grown from cuttings on a home and industrial scale. I know of no difference in size or character from doing so, and prefer it so if it suckers I don't have to worry about a seedy rootstock taking over

Yes, they both will root from cuttings.
I had a juneberry that was damaged by playing kids, I picked up some of the damaged branches and was able to root a few in damp sand and one I rooted in a jar with water by a window.

Mulberry is very easy to root from cuttings. I've got a dozen going right now in perlite using rooting hormone powder. I rooted cuttings in potting soil last summer also.

I had heard that Mulberry was easy, but both my friend and I found it worked poorly. It may have to do with location and weather patterns - I think we're at the edge of its range.
Instead, I've done it as layering - my tree still has a few branches very close to the ground. I fed them through a hole in the side of a #10 pot with a fairly light, compost-rich soil in it and dug the pot a little into the soil to help with temperature and moisture consistency. A year later, I chopped the branch off where it entered the pot.

I used to grow mulberries from cuttings all the time, no rooting hormone or anything, just poked them into a pot of soil. That was on the Big Island of Hawaii, though; very rainy a lot of the time, and warm and humid all the time. In a drier, temperate climate you might want to use rooting hormone, and I am betting a warm, humid greenhouse-type environment (or the closest to that you could create) would be where you would have the best luck getting them to root. I don't have experience rooting plants in temperate climates (though I just moved to one, so I'm about to learn!), but just wanted to say that yes, these guys do want to root, and you just have to figure out the best way to do it. These instructions look very thorough: https://www.growingmulberry.org/propagation.

I bought a few different mulberry trees and planted them at my new place. When they are big enough, I definitely plan on propagating more with cuttings, both to plant here and to pot up and sell.

Thanks for all the encouragement, folks. My previous attempts have failed but I'm going to give it another shot!

For the juneberry are we talking about soft or hardwood cuttings? When is a good time to take the cuttings?

Jay Angler wrote:I had heard that Mulberry was easy, but both my friend and I found it worked poorly. It may have to do with location and weather patterns - I think we're at the edge of its range.
Instead, I've done it as layering - my tree still has a few branches very close to the ground. I fed them through a hole in the side of a #10 pot with a fairly light, compost-rich soil in it and dug the pot a little into the soil to help with temperature and moisture consistency. A year later, I chopped the branch off where it entered the pot.

My first attempt at mulberry, using rooting hormone, around 20 cuttings yielded one tree.  I persisted over two or three years and got two more trees out of 60 cuttings or so.  I might try air layering if I need more.  Another tip I got was to put the pots on gravel or pavement to keep them warm over night.  

I've been told mulberry cuttings should be done in summer, not in dormant late winter like other trees.

similarly, my references say serviceberry/juneberry cuttings root best from summer softwood cuttings.

i suspect root cuttings are a decent option for both.

C Lungpin wrote:For the juneberry are we talking about soft or hardwood cuttings? When is a good time to take the cuttings?

Any time the ground is not frozen you should be ablr to take cuttings. Softwood is best, however the "cuttings" I rescued were a combination of both.

Here is a helpful link:
https://fruit.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/36/2016/03/juneberry.pdf

The native mulberry here is Morus rubra.  I have attempted to use it for live stakes and cuttings and only a few have survived but never grown any larger.

I really hope the term didn't exist at the time, but I experimented with a hugelswale years ago; if I recall it was built in late winter.  The wood in it was almost all fresh mulberry.  I ended up with a mulberry hedge that I've been butchering ever since.

Perhaps you could completely bury all your trimmings, branches, trunks, whatever, in a little hugel that you can keep watered?  I have never even seen M. nigra or M. alba  so maybe they're different.

Thanks, all! I've always tried hardwood cuttings that were just about to or had just broken dormancy. I'll definitely try softwood cuttings in June and July this year.