Honeyberry Propagation - The Rooting Process First of all, I need to tell people about where I live which plays a huge role in the success of my gardening adventures. I live on 5 acres in the middle of a 25 acre 100 year old cherry orchard. My salad garden is located right on the fringe between the orchard and heavy forest. To my south , vertical rock cliffs stand right behind me and tower for a good 250 feet and provide me with any size or quantity of rocks for my building pleasures. In between the rock cliffs and the orchard is a large strip of forest. Rare old growth trees of Pine, Oak, Maple, Hemlock, and Fir are densely packed into an area about 300 feet wide by a mile long. To my north and east there are more cliffs that drop about 600 feet down to the Columbia River on the north and its tributary "the white salmon" river on my east. This entire is essentially untouched by mankind and we have every animal, native shrub, and mycelium you could imagine. With the rocks and forest creating a microclimate and the support that fungal networks bring my success is limitless. With this "garden of eden" around me, plants reach their genetic potential and can grow crowded together due to an abundance of food and water. I utilize the "no-till" method because that is what nature does. I have learned to approach gardening from a stance of "nature" over "nurture". I realized that success is much easier to attain than time and money intensive methods. I did a whole lot of research about haskap's and honeyberries and the best place I found for tried and true experience ishttp://ebhbasics.blogspot.com these guys know what they're doing and they started out experimenting like all of us. One of my more labor intensive methods is shown in the picture below. In late august, I took 6 inch cuttings ranging from the diameter of a toothpick up to the size of your little finger. Rooting hormone didn't seem to make a difference in success rate or size of roots. My soil medium is from a 400 year old fir tree that had fallen on a rocky slope under the cover of some evergreens so it never got too much water on it and it had the best drainage possible underneath it. I got yards and yards of this stuff and it works like magic for my garden beds, blueberry bushes, and starting seeds/cuttings. The consistency is better than peat and it isn't killing the world by me taking it. Bugs have long gone from this fluffy lump and left behind their addition to the fertility of the mix.

I filled a nursery flat to the brim with my sifted medium and watered it thoroughly. I stuck cuttings in roughly 1 inch apart. Nothing fancy, just clip a 6 inch piece and stick it in. I have stopped using rooting hormone of any kind because I just don't seem to need it. After a hundred or two hundred (I don't count them) have been stuck in, I get a few longer cuttings around 10 inches and stick a few in there to help prop up the plastic bag from touching on all the cuttings. I tied the bag up and put

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them next to a tree. The tree is babysitting, haha, crazy gardener talk.

Here I have opened up the bag on December 1st. We have had below freezing tempuratures for a few months now and I wanted to check on these cuttings. Keep in mind these are from plants in late august and they were already starting to drop their leaves. My cuttings had a VERY hot experience in 95 degree weather while I was preparing the flat and all the cuttings lost their leaves a few days after they had been put out in the forest. Basically, these cuttings have had as rough a life as possible and look at those ROOTS!

I haven't checked on these guys in 3 solid months! The soil is still moist but not wet and I pulled up a handful of these guys in disbelief and then transplanted them into some fun areas around my house.

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This one is going near our front door staircase.

The other methods I used in rooting these cuttings are : the same way as above and kept inside in a garage and out in my garden just stuck in the ground. All my methods worked about the same, really well. My cuttings indoors require a lot more attention due to the lack of humidity and warmer tempuratures. I check on the cuttings indoors about once every week.

After experimenting in so many different ways with these cuttings, I have come to the conclusion that the best way to propagate from cuttings is to just stick them into the ground and leave them alone. And to sum up the variables, propagation of these plants via cuttings can be done in: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Any kind of soil (loamy and airy is best though) Any time of the year. From new growth or old growth With leaves or without leaves In freezing temperatures, mild or hot With or without rooting hormone With or without scarring up the cambium. ***just cut off a branch, walk around and cut pieces off of it and stick them in the ground.

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20140321064714/http://haskaps.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-rooting-process.html

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