I've sold my house and will be moving out this weekend. I want to take some branches from fruit trees (apple, cherry, pear) and red roses that are about 25 years old.
Is it possible to grow anything from these branches and how would I go about it transporting them/cultivating them despite this cold weather. We're in the middle of winter right now, but this week in particular is going to be hovering ever closer to the + side.
I was thinking of doing some cuttings and then wrapping the cut ends with soaked paper towels and putting them in a plastic bag. Then transfer them to a pot with soil and cultivating them indoors (of course).
Even if you could get the cuttings to root, most fruit trees and roses have been grafted. You will be better off to purchase new plants. Up-rooting plants by the previous owner after an offer is made is considered unethical practice, unless the bidder agrees.
is a site that was recently posted to the rec.gardens.roses newsgroup. It explains how to grow roses from clippings.
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:knhuRSjRcZcJ:storeshosting.com/roseexchange/download/RosePropagation.pdf+%22hardwood+rooting%22+%2Broses&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8Try this one for information about semi-hardwood rose propagation (on page
5). It's about using cuttings from fall or winter, rather than spring or summer (softwood propagation).
You could try doing the same thing with the fruit trees, but who knows?
If you take some branches now, and do as you say (plastic wrapped with wet paper or wet leaves or wet sand), and possibly put them in a cold dark place, they will remain viable for grafting for several weeks. The branches are not at their prime for cuttings or grafting, as they are dormant. Much better if you could have done it just before winter or just after winter.
As many have said, it is not advisable to try a cutting, even though if you remove enough branches, you can try that avenue (you may end up with a small tree with sick roots, but if it does not get sick, the fruit will be true). To try a cutting, cut the stick just before planting, dip the cut into rooting hormone, and plant in sterile medium with two buds above soil, a moisture tent, and a temperature in excess of 70F. You should water sparsely, as the moisture tent and lack of vegetation will save water. I have mulberry and kiwi cuttings in a 12 inches pot since september, by now the leaves are up and the moisture tent is off, and I have watered them only twice.
Much better to graft. But then you have to have a tree ready to accept the graft. Considering the varieties available today, the fact that you could get other desirable fruits that would fill your harvest season, such as plums, you may be better off starting with new trees.
The problem with most of the apples and, I believe, all the roses is that they are grown on grafted root stock. The natural root stock of hybrid roses and many of todays apple varities is too weak to hold up under most natural conditions - so buds are grafted onto more hardy stock. Growing plants from cuttings of these items would only result in a weak plant - because of the weak rootstock.
Cherries and pears I am not sure about the grafting possibilities.
JonquilJan
Learn something new every day As long as you are learning, you are living When you stop learning, you start dying
Keep your cuttings cool and in a moist but not wet area.. like soak them then wrap in wet newspapers and put them in a box and kept in a cool, but not freezing location while you do some research.
Generally speaking, you don't start fruit trees from cuttings, at least not from old wood.
However if your new location has some fruit trees of the proper variety, you could try grafting buds or twigs onto the existing tree, marking the resulting branch to know not to prune it off. If you get them to "take" and grow" that will preserve them until you find a proper rootstock onto which you could do bud grafting, which as others have told you, most fruit trees are produced these days. There are some which have grown from seeds, but that is not usual due to the time involved. Also, some of our tree varieties resulted from a "sport" on some tree where a branch or bud.. spontaneously "mutated" in some way we find desirable, and as such, can only be vegetatively reproduced..aka.. grafting.
There is The Grafter's Handbook you can look at to see how to line up the cambium layers in your cutting, with the same layer in the host plant, etc. There are many other books on the subject. Your local library probably has *something* and book stores may have books you and browse, particularly if you have a Borders or Barnes & Noble type store where you can sit down and read the books.
You can start roses from cuttings, usually a stem that has bloomed, that has at least 3 branches which have at least 5 leaves per branch, snip off the blossom end so it won't try to make seed, try to include some of the heel of the stem..where the cutting was connected to the main stem, poke it down into a rooting medium.. I used dirt when someone told me how it worked, and then took a mason jar, put water in it and shook it up to wet the jar, then toss a couple handsful of dry dirt in the jar, shake it, dump it. Some sticks to the inside of the jar.. reducing the sun, like shade cloth would... and having put the cutting in a bright but not overly sunny location I could just push the jar into the dirt.. kept it watered and .. dang if it didn't root! First and only time I tried it. There are better things to help now.. rooting hormones with fungicides in various strengths.
There are a bunch of propagation handbooks to help with starting plants from cuttings, and they usually have charts saying which type of cuttings and how to handle them for each type/age of cutting. I was surprised by just how many trees *could* be started from cuttings, but .. I didn't see too many fruit trees, but that's probably because it's more efficient to graft them.
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