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Post by prairiegarden on Jan 23, 2016 11:11:31 GMT -5
I have a couple of sour cherry trees ..don't know what kind as they were there when I got the property..and one of them has really nice fruit. A bunch of he branches are really low to the ground and I was thinking to try to layer them this year but then wondered if they could be used as cuttings? I would love to send a bunch of seedlings to a non profit arts centre in NS but they are too pricey to buy. Everything is very dormant right now..it's -20 something C outside..so it seemed that now would be a good time to ask if anyone has done this or has any suggestions about how to go about it.
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Post by philagardener on Jan 23, 2016 13:14:42 GMT -5
Sounds like a chance to learn how to graft onto seedling root stocks!
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Post by prairiegarden on Jan 23, 2016 14:14:03 GMT -5
maybe so but then I need to buy the rootstocks.. aside from not knowing where to get any easilly obtained rootstocks that would be as completely hardy as these are on their own ( semidwarf) roots, I'm trying to avoid having to buy anything for this project so then I can buy stuff I can't get otherwise.
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Post by khoomeizhi on Jan 23, 2016 14:31:12 GMT -5
from what i read, some cherries can be propagated from hardwood cuttings, including some sour cherries. seems like it's usually done in greenhouses, hormone dip, bottom heat, etc. probably usually collected just after leaf-fall, before danger of winter damage, so maybe not this time around?
worth trying layering, too, though.
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coppice
gardener
gardening curmudgeon
Posts: 149
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Post by coppice on Jan 23, 2016 14:36:52 GMT -5
Airlayer in spring start with dormant branches. Rooting hormone and a tournequette wire when you have cut back bark.
I bet if you got seedling cherrys to grow, they would be true-enough-to-type to not be making the easy graft worth bothering with.
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Post by philagardener on Jan 23, 2016 16:03:12 GMT -5
maybe so but then I need to buy the rootstocks.. aside from not knowing where to get any easilly obtained rootstocks that would be as completely hardy as these are on their own ( semidwarf) roots, I'm trying to avoid having to buy anything for this project so then I can buy stuff I can't get otherwise. If they are semi-dwarfed, then your original trees probably are already grafted onto dwarfing rootstocks (i.e. not their own roots), so if you don't do the same you might get full sized trees back. |
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Post by prairiegarden on Jan 23, 2016 16:15:39 GMT -5
Maybe but I tend to think they may well be Evans cherries or possibly one of the U of Sask varieties, although they seem to be old enough I tend to think they might be Evans. The Evans cherry is on its own rootstock and is self fertile and has been very widely sold across the Prairies for decades. I'm just describing them as semi dwarf because they are a fraction of the size of the Bing and Queen Anne cherry trees we had on Vancouver Island, although they appear to be mature. I don't think they've grown much if at all for the past 3 years at least.
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Post by mskrieger on Jan 27, 2016 12:58:11 GMT -5
Sour cherry trees never do get nearly as big as sweet cherries. And cuttings are definitely the way to go with sours, if you already have one with good fruit--due to some genetic weirdness, fruits from random pits are often small/spare. (That is, unlike peaches, you gotta plant a lot of sour cherry pits if you want to get even one tree with decent fruit.)
Often times sour cherry trees sucker from the roots. If so, you can use the suckers as rootstock. Otherwise, good luck layering!
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Post by khoomeizhi on Feb 1, 2016 18:50:45 GMT -5
i suppose you could grow out the seeds and graft on those when big enough too, but that's still a longer commitment than layering.
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