I did also graft a couple and germinated some seeds! I just had more sticks than stocks, so to speak, and figured it couldn’t hurt to try rooting the extras.
The two grafts I did still look green, but no bud swell yet, even though the other branches of the seedlings I grafted them onto have started pushing new growth.
The seeds haven’t sprouted yet either. I was surprised how few seeds these had compared to other “satsumas” I’ve bought in the stores here. Only one or two per fruit. They were also a bit larger and had a milder flavor, so it’s possible they aren’t even satsumas at all, and were just mislabeled generic mandarins.
Ordinarily, the roots are a mirror image of the top of the cultivar. So you might have just discovered something really good. The only problem I see is that the cuttings will grow like a standard tree eventually and not a dwarf whose root stock limits it’s size. That flower bud is a tale tell sign of root growth. I’m nevah more than partly right about these things but that does look promising.
Last year I took some cuttings from some of my northern high bush blueberries, treated them with root hormone, stuck them in a pot of sand under a clear plastic dome in the shade and got three out of seven rooted. They are in the blueberry patch now showing new growth. Pretty exciting.
Only one of the three cuttings is still alive, but the leaves are painfully pale. I’m guessing still no roots. I gave it a little highly diluted fish emulsion to see if that helped, but no signs of improvement.
I’m reviving this thread to ask about a few specific types of citrus that @jsteph00921 kindly gave me cuttings of yesterday (and Jonathan, please correct me if I’m misidentifying any of these!).
I have some (potted, heated) rootstock available for grafting, but not enough for all the cuttings, so I’m hoping to graft some and root some, but trying to decide which should be which. So, does anyone know if any of these are more likely to root than others, so I can focus on grafting the ones least likely to root?
The rooted mandarin twig didn’t end up growing much more than that last year (maybe it was focusing on root growth?), but is currently pushing a strong flush:
Was this from your last year’s (or 2 years ago) store-bought ones with stems attached?
I saw them like this at the market yesterday and wondered how yours turned out.
Yes, so that’s just about exactly one year from when I rooted the twig. I selected fruit for fresher looking twigs in the bin, and ended up with two failed grafts (no success there) and this one that rooted successfully out of 3 attempted.
I have limited experience rooting citrus cuttings. Is it common for them to get many new leaves but no roots for a couple months? The flying dragon cuttings I’m doing have lots of new leaves but no sign of roots. They pushed out many leaves within a couple days.
Prior to starting this thread, I’d never rooted any citrus before, either, so I’m not sure what’s normal for flying dragon in particular. At some point the wood will run out of nutrients and need some roots to survive.
Are they under a grow light? On a heating pad? The light will help the leaves produce sugars, which can trigger roots to form as they build up in the buried stem. Mine was on a heating pad when it succeeded, but I’m not sure how important that is.
If you look at the first pic the flying dragon are pushing lots of tiny leaves, but no roots. They were bare short twigs taken from a dormant tree.
There are also sudachi cuttings in that same container. I put them into the soil with leaves, and immediately the put out blooms and new growth. Hopefully a few make it.
Id rather buy trifolia hardy orange seeds, grow those out and then eventually graft onto them and see if those take, never tried it before - just an educated guess
I grow the flying dragon from seed too. For some reason I’m having problems getting seedlings to take from this batch. They germinate fine but then stall and never push through the surface. My best guess is they were exposed to the elements for too long before I gathered them up for germination. These fruit were ripe last August and September, so they’d been in the mud under the tree since late last summer before I brought them inside. I figure I have nothing to lose trying to root the cuttings. I already have the heating pads and humidity domes set up.
Since the mandarin worked this time last year, I took some cuttings of my trifoliate and stuck them in soil last month. I’m going to need some outside rootstocks later, in case my greenhouse Prague grafts take.
