This fall I’m trying to root some goumi cuttings kindly given to me by Cliff England’s son, Jon. I live in an extremely humid microclimate (a small valley between two mountains), and my previous attempts at more conventional goumi rooting in a propagation chamber failed due to mold. This time, I decided to try rooting the cuttings in the open air. It’s been a month since the cuttings were taken, and every one of them is still looking good. Here’s what I did:
Five 1.5-2.5 foot long cuttings were taken on Oct 14 and transported dry in a car for 3 hours. Later that day, I trimmed the ends, cut off 60-80% of the lower leaves, and cut the remaining top leavesin half. I gently scraped the lower 2" of bark to expose the cambium in 3-4 vertical lines, each approximately 2" long. I then dipped the ends in Hormex #8, covering the lower 2" of each cutting with rooting hormone. I then placed the cuttings in a black cup containing approximately 16oz tap water. I covered the cup opening with gardening gloves to keep out light and dust. I then kept the cup indoors at night and placed it outside in the shade during day.
After 7 days, only 1 leaf yellowed and fell off out of 5 cuttings. Tiny filaments were visible on the cuttings on areas exposed to Hormex.
On day 8, I changed water in cup. I replaced it with 16oz of spring water containing 0.75 tsp Azospirillum brasilense at 1.0 x 10^8 CFU/g (the product I used was RTI Xtreme Gardening Azos Beneficial Bacteria, Natural Growth Promoter).
Changing the water appeared to stress the cuttings because a couple of them had several leaves yellow and fall off after I did that.
I continued to move the cuttings outside in the morning and to take them inside at night. Three weeks later (a month after the cuttings were taken), all 5 look exactly the same as on day 8 above the water.
Below the water, tiny filaments continue to proliferate. I’m not sure if these filaments are roots, proto-roots, or something else altogether. Here’s a photo from this morning:
Unfortunately those “filaments” do not match the appearance of young goumi roots, but I look forward to your continued updates as to whether this works.
Thanks for your input, @JohannsGarden ! I have no idea what I’m looking at, so I appreciate any comments or advice from experienced propagators like yourself.
I have not tried rooting goumi cuttings… but good luck to you on that.
Back in the first week of July I setup this (air layer) attempt using a 2.6 gal bucket. That goumi branch that runs thru the bucket is a graft of carmine goumi.
I am hoping to propigate carmine goumi to get one established at my new home site orchard.
That carmine graft branch developed some nice buds this fall… like the rest of the bush did. I am hoping that by now that bucket has lots of roots in it.
This is my first attempt at air layering anything.
The fluffy stuff just above the water line in the photo above is not mold; it’s cotton that stick to the cutting after I dabbed it with a dilute baking soda solution to spot treat some mold there.
The last photo shows those weird filaments on the cuttings. It looks like they’re getting longer and more threadlike.
The tops of the cuttings are still looking good, but they might show signs of stress soon because I had to change the water due to an oily film that appeared on the surface of the water. The water had also become cloudy.
Alot of cuttings I start in water will grow little bumps on the bark like that. It usually indicates possible new roots, but sometimes they don’t form. The first set of bumps I see usually doesn’t grow roots, but it will keep doing it and eventually it’ll either form roots or rot. If it does start to rot, cut the rotting part off, change the water, and put the cutting back it. You can keep trying till you run out of cutting or it dies.
It looks like the bumps might be growth of cambium (the plant’s undifferentiated cells). That’s a good sign since higher cambium concentrations will make root formation easier.
When I checked on the cuttings a couple days ago, I noticed an oily film on top of the water they were sitting in; so I replaced that water with fresh spring water inoculated with the same mycorrhizae I used initially.
Today I checked on the cuttings again and noticed that density of whispy filaments on the stems had increased significantly and the oily film was back. Upon closer inspection, I smelled rotten eggs in the cup and saw black spots on some of the stems (probably rot).
Taking @sharq’s advice, I then cut the stems above the water line and started again from scratch. I followed the same setup procedure as before, which consisted of scraping some bark off to expose cambium and coating them with rooting hormone; but this time I stuck the ends of the cuttings into cellulose rooting sponge plugs. We’ll see if that makes any difference. I also reduced the mycorrhizae concentration to 1/2 tsp per 16oz spring water, in case the inoculum contributed to the rot I observed. Not very scientific, but I’m more interested in success than in doing good science.
