Cloning and propagating rootstock questions?

I’ve been doing mostly planting pits/seeds, but I’ve also had limited success by pruning “suckers” that have roots from trees. I’ve tried cutting failed trees down to the ground and waiting for them to develop “suckers” then placing a collar about 4-6" deep and letting the suckers develop root systems on their own but that hasn’t worked for me.,

My question is, what has worked for you guys/girls? How can I get it to work for me? any/all advice is welcome

I’d like this thread to become kind of what works of doesn’t work for everyone in all zones

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Steve

I learned the stooling method from this Video and it worked out well for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn9nzWr9Q1w

Tony

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Thanks Tony, that is very valuable info for apples, and it works great. … I should have been more clear,… I’ve tried that with stone fruit and have had no success with myro 29 and citation

I tried wet sawdust with marianna root suckers. Months later there were still no roots. I shaved bark on opposite sides, applied root hormone, and covered it back up with wet saw dust. Three weeks later I checked and there were well developed root buds where I shaved the bark.

I also had good success rooting dormant marianna root suckers via the usual cuttings method.

Breaking the bark open seems to help with plums. I don’t why they wouldn’t root by simply covering the suckers with moist bedding. I’ve rooted peach suckers without removing bark. .

I have gotten rootstock from suckers on my peach tree on Citation. The suckers are further out so I could dig more aggressively to get enough root. I let them grow a year then dug while still dormant and potted. You can bud graft the sucker while in the ground or the next fall when independent.

I have put M111 clippings in potting soil and gotten 20% takes from it. Not using any rooting hormone or anything. Just stabbing in to the soil after cutting off the rootstock. It is slow. It would be year 2 or 3 before they can be used.

Well, until now, I’ve had medium succes with hard wood and green wood cuttings inside, in potting soil. I will try air layering this summer for various prunus. I would like to build a plant propagation bed and I wonder what would be the best way to do it. I’m thinking 2’ X 6’ white cedar box, 10" deep, filled with sand and peat moss.Maybe hang some fabric to provide a bit of shade? I read so many different opinions about the subject… Not sure if I’m going the right direction. Would appreciate ideas and suggestions!

I have always wanted to do something like this, planing the cutting right into the soil. I just think that skipping the transplanting step would be better. Did you find any success?

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I think this is a potentially useful thread (at least based on intent of the OP), and I have a question that I haven’t found an answer to, so I’ll ask here in the hope an answer adds some insight to an “ultimate propagating rootstock” thread:

I have an immature grafted mandarin. This particular tree seems to be performing well & is healthy in my soil. I have two other varieties (Kishu being one) that seem to be struggling in the same soil and I’d like to try cloning the rootstock of the former tree and grafting the Kishu onto it…

Is there a way to clone a rootstock that has been grafted and doesn’t push suckers? Perhaps with root cuttings?

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Haven’t tried it, but it seems to me that somebody here said that you can graft directly to roots. I imagine that it would depend on the root - the devil is always in the details!

https://growingfruit.org/search?q=root%20grafting

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@spurious
It would be worth a shot to try digging up a root piece , and grafting onto that.
I have not tried it with citrus, but works with many other things.
So as Mark suggested above " root grafting"

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Do you think better to just try to get the root to sprout before grafting or likely more success if there’s whatever stored carbohydrates in the scion so better together…?

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i am going to try trench layering this upcoming season. I tried ground layering and only 1 shoot came up and that was off a bud that was still left on the stem. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. TYIA

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