I have watched several videos over the years and read about different peoples experiences here. I was thinking about some things like pears that are so difficult to root but callous so easily when you graft. What would happen if you cut a pencil sized scion and stored it in the fridge like normal, then grafted it on in early spring. Just as you saw the scion start to wake up and know a callous has formed you would cut it off right at the graft and plant it , do you think it would root?
So I went out and sacrificed a harrow delight graft that I put on this spring, I cut it off right below the graft. It had lots of callous, my crappy alignment maximized the amount of callous 
. I removed all of the green growth and
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Perhaps but what would you gain? You would lose the rootstock root system and likely kill the rootstock i am thinking.
Even if you wanted standard roots i would probably try something like grafting very low, then planting a foot deeper than the graft, and podsibly banding the rootstock w something like wire or a zip tie to kill more gradually
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As soon as you cut the wood it begins the callous process.
Let me introduce to the hardwood cutting man, Mike McGroarty. The good stuff begins about 3:20 on this video.
FWIW anymore I only take serious any growing advice given by people with grey hair. Mike is the man.
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So let’s say I have an ohxf 87 four feet tall and branching, I could take the of four limbs , harvest as scion wood , graft back on for a couple of weeks in spring and then stick them and now have four ohxf 87 trees. Or in the case of the harrow delight , I took it off of a branch on a big 20 year old franken tree rootstock with ten other varieties where it was just a back up graft any way.
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I have seen that video and it is very interesting but rooting sand cherries is not quite the same as rooting pears. I am just thinking of how fast the callous forms with no special heat mat or moisture control. I took ten grape vine cuttings last winter and kept them for a couple months on a heat mat wrapped in damp paper towel and the bottom covered in a baggie to get less callous than that harrow delight has on it.
I guess I am no expert and wouldn’t mean to discourage you but
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I was under the impression pears, esp. the OHF crosses, take pretty well as hardwood, and that HW cuttings were a fairly common means of propagating
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you could possibly get your branch tips to root, but wouldn’t you get similar results cutting that branching OHxF down and mounding a stool bed for the summer? I’d guess you could get at least as many rooted suckers, and neither they or the callused twigs would be useable this year anyway…
my guess is you can do what you’re proposing, I’m just still not sure it would be any more efficient than cutting the thing and creating a stool bed from it? you’re sort of doing the same thing, on the same timeframe, except you need other places to stick your OHF twigs artificially in the meantime, if I am reading your posts correctly…
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Below is an excerpt from Cummins nursery regarding the propagation of the ohxf series. I know many of the apple rootstocks can be propagated through stool beds but I have not heard it mentioned as an option for the ohxf series.
The OHxF series of rootstocks originated from crosses made more than 75 years ago by Reimer at Oregon State. Reimer was seeking primarily rootstocks resistant to fire blight; both the Old Home and Farmingdale parents are highly resistant. Reimer’s work was continued by nurseryman Lyle Brooks and by researchers at Oregon State. All the OHxFs are propagated by cuttings or in tissue culture – with considerable difficulty, as all are reluctant rooters.
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Propagating fruit trees from hardwood cuttings is a very interesting topic to me. This method has its merrits as it’s cheap and not labor intensive. Plus it is very special (at least to me) to have named varieties of fruit trees true to the roots. I’d love to grow morus nigra on its own roots but my material is too young by far doing experiments.
Right now i try to root different plums in sharp sand. In the past I never had success with hardwood cuttings but some success with semi-hardwood cuttings. Thats for the difficult to root fruits. Of course you can easily propagate figs, kiwiberry etc. that way. In my tests I found results are even dependent on the variety not only the kind of fruit. E.g. in the categorie of plums I had good success with Mirabelle de Nancy but no success at all with prune-type plums. Apricot (different seedlings) work also fairly well with semi-hardwood cuttings. Never tried apples and pears though.
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I agree, I have had limited success rooting in sand using hormone. If the pear graft roots it would be interesting to see if the roots grew from the callous area of the cleft graft. If I had as much callous as that graft shows on a cutting I was trying to root I would be thrilled.
Yours is a very intersting experiment. I guess most of that callous was produced by the stock. Looking forward to your results, fingers crossed.
That’s a very good point carot, I had considered that possibility and two things come to mind. If it does grow roots from the callous and that callous is from the rootstock and say the rootstock was ohxf 87 would the resulting tree be on true ohxf 87 roots? Or the second possibility would be roots from the scion and the rootstock like you would get if you plant an apple below the graft , essentially on its own roots. Of course if you were cloning a root stock and grafted ohxf onto ohxf then rooted the resulting cutting you would have cloned the ohxf 87. I may try this on a Juliet cherry that I accidentally grafted onto another Juliet cherry root stock.
Jason, did your pear cutting grow? Or any other hardwood cuttings you tried.
No, I did not get roots from the calloused pear cuttings. However, I stuck the cuttings deep in soft dirt and left them, not the ideal situation for growing roots. I thought I would try that and see if they would root with out any special attention. I still think that allowing a callous to form then removing the cutting would have to help rooting success. Many hardwood cuttings never even get to the callous stage . I may try some cherry bushes next spring and see if it works . I also wonder if you get a graft to callous heavily that you may be able to air layer it and leave it on the mother plant until roots form
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Let us know if you have any success rooting pears. I collected some OHxF 333 scion today and will experiment attempting to root it.
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I’m having real good success callusing cuttings this year (see post and photos - Callused Cuttings) with my simple setup. Won’t know about roots for awhile but at least it’s a start and much better than I’ve ever done with just sticking direct in pot or bench. I have a tupperware basin with mix of DE and chainsaw sawdust/chips (because that’s what I had on hand), well dampened. I bury cuttings in it and cover with plastic. It sits near our woodstove with mix temperature staying about 70 (air temp 60 to 80).
I’ve gotten good callus on apples, pears, honeysuckle, in from 1 to 2 weeks. The nice thing is it’s easy to check, take out (and pot) when callused, and add more anytime. The last few weeks as the snow goes down I’ve been finding low broken branches (from the icy snow going down and pulling them off) and girdled branches (snow was a foot higher this year than my 2 ft vole guards). That’s given me more cuttings to put in my callus bin - apple, cherry, mulberry, juneberry, rose, haskap. Be interesting to see how they do. For those that don’t callus this way it seems Jason’s idea could work.
Of course, gettings roots from there is the big challenge.
Sue
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