What I'm up to now.

[SwampDonkey]

Quote from a thread in 2005.

On the topic of regenerating poplars from cuttings. I was walking along a road last week and noticed something interesting. The road commission or DOT put sticks in the ground in the fall to mark the mouth of culverts for spring clean out. Well, someone cut off a balsam poplar and stuck it in the mud, and it now has rooted and new leaves are coming from dormant buds in the bark. We've had so much rain this spring, that conditions have been ideal. Kinda cool I thought.

Stay tuned

[Tom]

I think it is really neat when someone, inadvertantly, plants a tree or flower.  I wonder how many fence posts, in the past, have rooted and produced a straight line of trees?

[SwampDonkey]

Here are some cuttings I'm rooting, these are balsam poplar tips from yard trees. I used to do this years ago as a kid.




These are cultivated red raspberry canes, I think I have done these before as well. Not sure though. My father tried sticking some cuttings in the spring mud last year, but they never took. He is too impatient, and likes to dig all the time. You gotta plant them and don't disturb them while nature does it's magic.



By April sometime we will have some new bushes. My uncle wanted some raspberry to start a little berry garden, so I'll send them up there. Hopefully they will take. We'll see.

[Tom]

Does each bud root?  What do you do then, cut the canes into pieces to make a bunch of plants, or do you only expect one plant from each cutting?  In this case would you get 3 plants?

[SwampDonkey]

Any of the buds that form roots will make a new plant, so you can theoretically have as many plants as you have parent buds. From what I remember, not all buds will root and might have a stick of buds that will never root. You could separate the plants by cutting the connection once your roots developed well enough.

[Tom]

A chicken farmer friend of mine bought and planted some hybrid raspberries that were huge and seedles.  I brought some canes home and tried to root them, but they wouldn't take.  He didn't understand.  He said that every place a cane hit the ground at his place, it rooted. 


"I don't have chickens that fertilize everything"   His ground would is so rich it would walk away if the corners weren't tied down.

[SwampDonkey]

My soil up here is a lot better than down at dad's. They abandoned most of those fields on his side of the river years ago. I have earthworms all through my soil here and I don't do a thing to it. Down there his ground is hard like cement, I've never seen a worm in it. The ground here will get hard on the lawn, but that's expected when it gets dry in summer. Under my raspberries is like a compost pile.



Look, all ya gotta do is scratch this ground and there is worms. The top is covered in worm castings.

[Tom]

I love worm beds like that.  It makes it a lot easier to go fishing when you can just step out the door and pick up some bait. 

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah, we used to dig a lot up for the start of trout fishing in the spring time, April 15th. Bicycles, fishing poles, bate boxes and lots of hooks. I'm on my way to the brook.

[Dodgy Loner]

I plan to try propogating some plants from cuttings this summer as well.  I'm in the process of getting my yard landscaped, and the cost of ornamental plants has been quite the eye opener.  Hopefully I'll be able to do it much more inexpensively by growing the plants myself from (free) cuttings.

[DanG]

Some years ago, my Dad pruned some pear trees during the winter.  In the spring, he used some of the branches for tomato stakes, and every one of them rooted.

[Tom]

When I was a little boy, anybody that came to our house left with a back seat full of cuttings.  Anytime we left someone else's house, we left with a trunk full of cuttings.   It seemed to be the general passtime, creating plants. 

[ErikC]

  A  lot of people garden here, and quite a bit of trading around goes on. I got a grape cutting that had rooted and three quince fruit that are looking good already this year. Gave away some raspberry cuttings as well. I like seeing some of the local homestead plants continuing on.

[davidlarson]

As a child in the early 1940s I lived in Cuba; in the late 1960s I lived in Haiti; I spent time in the US Army in about 2004 in Bolivia.  In all of those places, which were tropical, it was common practice for the local farmers to drives stakes and sticks into the ground, which would regularly take root and become living fence posts.  If they did not take root, they would either quickly rot, or be devoured by termites, but of course as living small trees they could survive.  I don't know what species these were, but the idea was intriguing, and I have wondered whether any plant or tree in our temperate climate could be induced to take root like this.

David Larson

[tyb525]

I think osage-orange/black locust was planted as natural fence rows, can't remember which it was though.

[SwampDonkey]

Balm-of-gilead seems to be able to. But regular aspen like quaking and largetooth I doubt you could even sprout from the buds unless you used chemicals to induce it. Balm has great big resin coated buds and I think it's something in the resin that aids the sprouting. Going out on a limb with that assumption though.

[Ianab]

I have wondered whether any plant or tree in our temperate climate could be induced to take root like this.

Hybrid poplars might be an option.

In our climate at least you could get a 6 ft stick and poke it into the ground beside a fence. In a couple of years it will have swallowed the wires.

As a bonus you could probably copice them at head height in summer and drop the branches to feed stock in the dry weather, then gather the limbs for firewood. Maybe not good firewood, but it will burn, and it's free.

Ian

[Don K]

Donkey, that ruler don't look right. I think I need to send you one. 

Don

[Riles]

I have wondered whether any plant or tree in our temperate climate could be induced to take root like this.

Cottonwood is easily propagated from twigs.

[SwampDonkey]

Donkey, that ruler don't look right. I think I need to send you one. 

Don

Yeah, it's got different metric scales. 1:50, 1:10, 1:20, 1:100