Propagating fruit trees by hardwood cuttings - A discussion of the year 2023

Hey all, welcome to my thread on fruit tree propagation. Have you ever wanted to propagate trees like Apples, Pears, Quince, Figs, Mulberries, or others? Me too. And I've also been overwhelmed by the inconsistent information regarding if hormones even do anything, I've been overwhelmed when I do everything right, and in June I find out nothing rooted. So I know how difficult this extremely easy task can be for many.

Last year I successfully rooted some Negronne figs and it brought the spring back into my step so to say. This year I really want to succeed with all types of trees and I know I can do it. Particularly Maleae and Figs. I have equipment for rooting indoors but I'd really like to root IN the hugelbed. I rooted the figs in the bed this year, but can it but done with Maleae? that is my question.

Feel free to ask questions and discuss amongst yourselves.

I will start with an experiment in Glen County California where there are many mission figs abandoned at old homesites.  We cut off 2 foot lengths of branches and used a hydrospade [ basically a length of pipe with a flattened end ] to punch 16 inch holes in the ground along the west fence for future shade.  Planted in the fall they grew vigorously the next spring.   The roots needed to be that deep to survive the hot dry summers there.  

Figs are about as easy as anything to root. Currants and elderberry has been easy for me as well. I have been told by knowledgable people vegetative cloning of Pome and Stone fruits is not worth the effort, because if it works at all, the roots will be weak. I have opted instead to start from seed acquired from pressing juice, then I will graft if the fruit is not something I want. Best of luck though, I’d be interested to hear if hardwood cuttings work.

Ben Zumeta wrote:I have been told by knowledgable people vegetative cloning of Pome and Stone fruits is not worth the effort, because if it works at all, the roots will be weak.

Does anyone know why the roots of vegetative cloning is said to be weaker?

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:

Ben Zumeta wrote:I have been told by knowledgable people vegetative cloning of Pome and Stone fruits is not worth the effort, because if it works at all, the roots will be weak.

Does anyone know why the roots of vegetative cloning is said to be weaker?

I can't say that I know, but I have read somewhere that apples, at least, go through a transition from young plants to mature plants, and that once apples are mature plants, they are almost impossible to root. Further, since all commercial apple trees are grafted from mature plants, that all established varieties of apple need to be grown as grafts on seedlings. But, since I don't remember where I read this, take it for what it's worth.

I  found  one youtube video that shows propagation of hardwood cuttings in a cloner, which seems like neat trick.
I have failed repeatedly to move rooted fig and even willow cuttings from water to soil, so I'm not sure if it would help me.

I wonder if air layering also leads to weak roots on stone and pome fruits?

I've used a sub-irrgated bucket with a black garbage bag to some good effect, but there was some mold.
Next time I want to add garlic cloves to the pot to hopefully counter mold and mildew.
I also might use technique borrowed from grafting and wrap the exposed ends of the cuttings with tape or wax.

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:

Ben Zumeta wrote:I have been told by knowledgable people vegetative cloning of Pome and Stone fruits is not worth the effort, because if it works at all, the roots will be weak.

Does anyone know why the roots of vegetative cloning is said to be weaker?

Some pome and stone fruit trees are prone to produce clones when roots or trunks at the soil line are damaged. So if a desirable tree is not grafted then root cutting may give you the best results.  Such clones often sow up where I have cultivated too close to plum trees. When gifted they establish with vigorous roots.

I came here looking for the answer to this but it would seem I have only found more questions.

My question would be what types of fruit trees grow best from cuttings. I just put these in my TurboKloner 2 days ago and a freeze is coming in 2 days so I might as well take desirable cuttings and try to root them as they will likely be burnt to a crisp in 2 days. I have every type of tree you can grow for my climate 9A. here is what I currently have in the "Kloner" crossed out and what im thinking of pulling the ones not crossed out when I get off work today to add to it... I know Figs root easy, I do not know about the others. I could pull some peaches, plums, pluots, mahaw, pawpaw.... I just don't know what roots the best. No real point in filling a whole row of wood thats just going to rot. I doubt I will get feedback soon but im hoping to show the failures of this experiment.





-Read

Im zone 9A Bridge City Texas (Coast by Houston)

Apple trees on their own roots are an under-rated topic.   Here on the Canadian prairies the best apple root stocks are vigorous and full sized, usually Malus baccata.  It's possible that the cold hardy zone 2-3 varieties we can grow would do well on their own roots, they could be healthier and longer lived trees.  After reading this article by Eliza I'm inspired to try it out and make a few stool beds of my favourite cultivars.

https://elizapples.com/2016/03/20/on-their-own-roots/

For the last few summers I've filled my small greenhouse with softwood cuttings under mist propagation, and it's always fun to experiment and try to root something new.  This year I was excited to have some luck rooting several plum cultivars from June softwood.  I've also rooted Siberian crabapple / Malus baccata softwood with a low percentage 10-15%, but adjusting variables like bottom heat, timing, IBA concentration, and half a dozen other small details could probably get that higher.   It made a few dozen clones that grew on in a nursery bed this year, and they're now large enough to graft or plant out.  I selected the tree to use a rootstock so they actually went into a new stoolbed this fall, and next year each one should produce at least a few rootstocks.  Btw the root systems on those apple trees after a full season in the ground were super healthy when I lifted them, and the trees were 2-3' tall.   The same process would work to make own root cultivar trees.  Another good way to get apple to root would be to air layer small branches, it takes a few months but by early fall you'll can probably get a high rate of success and then do the same, plant them out in a bed and grow them on for a year.   If you want excellent instructions and examples of air layers from the beginning to the end results I recommend watching Heron's Bansai https://www.youtube.com/c/HeronsBonsaiUK

These three approaches (softwood, air layering, stool layering) are going to be easier than starting with hardwood cuttings for Malus because it's just a slow to root tree.  I rooted a bed of gooseberries from hardwood this year and they nearly all made it, growth was slow from May to July, then they took off and filled out.  With hardwoods like willow and balsam poplar, you can stick a cutting in late spring that's coming out of dormancy with swollen buds and they'll start to root as they leaf out, I had nearly 100% success with those this year and less so with the more dormant cuttings from late winter.  For fruits if you're just looking to explore what fruit trees/bushes can be rooted form hardwood cutting a list of the easiest to root ones would include currants, gooseberries, elderberry, figs.

Having said that, I have read that it's possible to root some crab apples from hardwood, but your milage may vary between cultivars.   If you try it I would suggest callousing them first, like how they start grapes.  Use a medium to strong rooting hormone like 4000-8000ppm IBA and start them off in cold space to keep the top of the cutting dormant while on bottom heat for some weeks in a medium like perlite.   Edible acres has some good videos of a setup like this, also a great channel with many videos about propagation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Geew9G4jP4&ab_channel=EdibleAcres

I've used apple water sprout trimmings for pea supports and a few occasionally will root. I've found that you must leave those that sprout in the ground at least till the next late winter when they're dormant to move them. You can sow peas very early in the spring and then trim your trees and just push them in the loose soil when they're nice and fresh.

Figs are pretty much impossible not to root.

As long as you take dormant cuttings and don't let them dry out you'll get at least 50% to take, I think.
Elderberry is supposed to be even easier I hear, and black currants too!

I'm going top build a bottom heat sand box, and I'll let you know, look on you tube for bottom heat rooting by Edible Acres, it's interesting at least.

For what it is worth:
One big difference between rooted cuttings and seedlings is that the stone fruits and pomes put down a taproot when germinated from seed and cuttings never make a taproot.

Side note on the subject of non-graft cloning of apples: From what I've read, some wild apple species, including Malus sieversii (the main ancestor of modern apples) produce suckers. Wouldn't it be neat to have an apple landrace with the suckering trait, so you can dig up suckers from the nicest seed-grown trees and share around? I think I'm gonna try to make this happen. I've found a source of Malus sieversii (yay!) and also been given a sapling supposedly from an old norwegian variety which was described as suckering (if it's true, double-yay!) so we'll see in a couple decades if I can start sharing out own-root apple suckers...

Interesting thing about the supposed sucker I recieved, though: it has what very much looks like a taproot. So either the suckers form something resembling taproots, or it's actually a seedling. Hoping for the former...

Eino Kenttä wrote:Side note on the subject of non-graft cloning of apples: From what I've read, some wild apple species, including Malus sieversii (the main ancestor of modern apples) produce suckers. Wouldn't it be neat to have an apple landrace with the suckering trait, so you can dig up suckers from the nicest seed-grown trees and share around? I think I'm gonna try to make this happen. I've found a source of Malus sieversii (yay!) and also been given a sapling supposedly from an old norwegian variety which was described as suckering (if it's true, double-yay!) so we'll see in a couple decades if I can start sharing out own-root apple suckers...

Interesting thing about the supposed sucker I recieved, though: it has what very much looks like a taproot. So either the suckers form something resembling taproots, or it's actually a seedling. Hoping for the former...

Last year (late autumn, I believe) I dug out a bunch of suckers from a grafted tree in our yard.  The suckers have a clearly different leaf from the apple tree that is growing from them, but I hope to use them as root stock for grafting.  This past week I went through many of them, and noted that quite a few look like they have healthy buds.  I need to pay attention to them next summer when they are in leaf to see if they are really alive (which they appear to be)

Over this past weekend, I had the opportunity to dig suckers from a neighbotr's tree that was damaged and had to be cut down.  The neighbor believes that this tree is not a grafted tree (house has been in the family 3 gen) and the leaves look like normal apple tree leaves.  The fruit of the tree was a baking apple, green, I believe.  The neighbor is hoping that he can revive the tree from a branch that regrew after the tree was cut down.  

Does anyone know why the roots of vegetative cloning is said to be weaker?  

I think this is because all grafting happens on a rootstock that is at least a year older than any new cutting hoping to make roots (if there are exceptions to this, then on a seedling in the prime of its life that is already well rooted).  So the comparisons that are made between newly rooted cuttings and a graft will always favor the graft if you don't account for that rootstock having a year (or more!) headstart.  If someone actually took the time to compare, time for time, conditions being equivalent, how long a seedling took to create a good root system (from the point of emerging its first root)... against how long a cutting of that seedling took to do the same (starting from the same point of emerging its first root)... I wonder if there really would be any difference?  It's important to be comparing apples with apples, so to speak.

A specifically chosen rootstock cultivar also may have been favored for the vigorous quality of its roots (among other things), which makes it an unfair comparison to think that the more normal root growth of a cultivar would be weak.

Given the time it needs to 'catch up' to where the graft started out from, I don't see any reason to believe that a cloned cultivar's roots would be inferior in any way.

I've been propagating various fruit trees and bushes from cuttings, layerings, seeds and grafting onto rootstocks for over 30  years now. I've had a lot of successes and a lot of failures. One thing that I'm not good at is chip budding, which is the main type of grafting done to propagate trees in the prunus genus during June and July. I've also had bad luck with late winter bench grafting with this group.

I would like to find out if I could grow peaches, European/Japanese plums and  sweet/pie cherry trees from cloned cuttings using a cloning machine, such as the Turbo Klone shown in the photo earlier in this thread. I've never used one of these machines before, but I've watched a video or two where the grower said that a hydroponic system like Turbo Klone would grow cloned trees from the prunus group.

Has anyone on here had success with these cloning machines like the turbo klone? I'm especially interested if John Read had success with the clones in the photo. I'll also try sending him a purple mooseage and see what happened with his clones.

I'm not sure what happened to my purple mooseage to John Read, but I couldn't seem to get it to send him a message. Hopefully, he'll be able to reply to my question right here on this thread.

M.K. Dorje Sr. wrote:I've been propagating various fruit trees and bushes from cuttings, layerings, seeds and grafting onto rootstocks for over 30  years now. I've had a lot of successes and a lot of failures. One thing that I'm not good at is chip budding, which is the main type of grafting done to propagate trees in the prunus genus during June and July. I've also had bad luck with late winter bench grafting with this group.

I would like to find out if I could grow peaches, European/Japanese plums and  sweet/pie cherry trees from cloned cuttings using a cloning machine, such as the Turbo Klone shown in the photo earlier in this thread. I've never used one of these machines before, but I've watched a video or two where the grower said that a hydroponic system like Turbo Klone would grow cloned trees from the prunus group.

Has anyone on here had success with these cloning machines like the turbo klone? I'm especially interested if John Read had success with the clones in the photo. I'll also try sending him a purple mooseage and see what happened with his clones.

The only thing ive been able to root is potato slips (easy and not necessary to use ezcloner) and figs. All the plums and citrus etc have just rotted... Idunno if im doing something wrong or its just not the way...

-Read

John, thank you for the quick reply. I'm sorry that your Turbo Klone did not seem to work for most of your projects.

Has anyone else on here tried  cloning fruit trees with cloning machines/hydroponics?

If I were to try to clone more difficult pome and stone fruits, I’d use the plastic bottle method. Putting a bottle with a hole in the bottom and slice down the side around a vigorous densely noded branch. Then use the slice to fill with cloning medium (for me, coconut coir and perlite soaked in willow water), with at least 3 nodes (5-7 is best) in the medium and 3 nodes sticking out the hole in the bottom. Then tape the bottle closed. A bucket of willow water and a wick can be used to keep it moist. I have seen this work well for other plants. Of course if its low enough to ground you could layer it there with less moisture and heat stress potential.