Experimenting with propagation starting with oak, chestnut, hazel, willow and broom using cuttings and seedlings from the wood. I remove self seeded oak saplings that spring up every year on the Ride and transplant them into pots to grow on until ready to plant out in a more suitable position. The chestnut and hazel seem to be the most successful though it took a dozen or more hazel cuttings to get one strong survivor. Layering hazel is supposed to have a better success rate than cuttings but I suspect this method will be more susceptible to deer munching. The transplanted oak seems to be the most difficult, some of them are still hanging on in there, but not exactly thriving. Perhaps they'll have a growth spurt this year. Each successful plant will need major deer protection.
Hi, I used to grow thousands of trees mainly for sale as 'Wedding Tree Favours' .....quite rewarding spiritually but not financially and very hard work, anyway that is another story.
ReplyDeleteYou can propagate Willow very easily, along with relatives like Sallow. Also Poplar is quite easy to root from cuttings along with Alder. Holly is possible but much slower to get going. You can propagate Aspen from root cuttings, lay a root horizontally in a sandy loam and it will shoot fairly easily. As for other species, I have no experience. I know that you can layer Hazel, but we never grew these as they are not strictly trees. I would like to increase the population of Hazel in my wood but will attempt that using locally collected nuts which are as we speak germinating? I hope.
As for Oak???? I think they are very difficult and given that acorns germinate almost as quick as they fall off the tree, then why bother. One thing I have read is that cuttings taken from very young trees are more likely to take than from older trees. good luck.