Cuttings and rooted canes

Yesterday, while pulling up the boysenberry canes from under the grass, and  staking them up in a poor mans trellis, I managed to break a few of the canes.  Noticing that they had white roots, I decided to try and pot them for later replanting.

Behind the boysenberry, are two planter bags of cuttings of what I believe to be heritage "Gabrier's Gully Gold Field" gooseberry that someone went out and retrieved.  Named for the location, rather than any particular variety.  And behind that are two more planter bags of Invicta gooseberry cuttings.

Planting out blackcurrant cuttings

A lot of my existing blackcurrant cuttings I've planted out, are of unknown varieties.  The reason for this is that any way where a name or date is written on plastic, results in faded unreadable plastic within several months to a year.  After that, it comes down to where whatever it was, was planted.  And how reliably the notes are, if there are any.

In this case, I must have started my new tagging regime.  This involves taking segments of coke cans, and inscribing the variety name on them with a sharp implement.  So I am almost certain these are Cotswold Cross blackcurrant cuttings.

And here they are planted out in the paddock.  The ground is still damp from the rain last night, but I watered them in anyway.  The stones are to prevent the chickens from scratching them out of the ground, as has happened before.

All of these have the coke can labels around them, and are labeled on an orchard map.  I'll still need to confirm they are the variety I think they are, based on written and internet descriptions.  But I'll need to do that for all my fruit, as more than a few have turned out to be other than described by whoever they were sourced from.

Scionwood Exchange

In New Zealand, have fruit trees or bushes and can graft cuttings or wanting to try?

I'm exchanging cuttings from my fruit trees this Winter, with some other interested people who have their own selection of fruit trees/bushes.  If you're googling for scions/cuttings for grafting in New Zealand and have your own selection to exchange, please comment and we'll get in touch.

Here's my exchange list for Winter 2016:

• Almond - Monovale
• Apple - Granny Smith
• Apple - Montys Surprise
• Apple - Peasgood Nonsuch
• Apple - Splendour
• Apple - Cider - Brown's Eater
• Apple - Cider - Kingston Black
• Apple - Cider - Lady Finger Cider
• Apple - Cider - Yarlington Mill
• Apricot - Cluthagold
• Apricot - Moorpark
• Apricot - Royal Rosa
• Apricot - Unknown (older tree)
• Cherry - Lapin
• Fig - Brown Turkey
• Fig - French Sugar
• Grape - Albany
• Mulberry - Black
• Nectarine - Fantasia
• Nectarine - Goldmine
• Olive - Frantoio
• Peach - Black Boy
• Peach - Golden Queen (from seed)
• Peach - Yellow (Unknown, mislabeled Black boy from nursery).
• Peach - Flatto (still need to look at tree to see if can take cuttings).
• Pear - Packham's Triumph
• Pear - Winter Nellis
• Pear - Taylor's Gold
• Plum - Black Amber
• Plum - Coes Golden Drop
• Plum - Greengage
• Plum - Hawera
• Plum - Prune - Italian
• Plum - Santa Rosa
• Plumcot
• Quince - Smyrna
• Walnut - Unknown (decent sized nuts, reliable bearer).

Bushes for grafting or rooting cuttings:

• Citrus, Grapefruit, Golden Special.
• Currant, Black, Magnus.
• Currant, Black, Cotswald Cross.
• Currant, Red, Unknown (mislabeled White Currant from Mitre 10)
• Currant, Red, Unknown (unlabeled from nursery).
• Currant, Red, Gloria de Versailles.
• Gooseberry, Invicta.

Roots and other things:

• Artichoke, Jerusalem.
• Comfrey, roots.
• Garlic, Takahue Red.
• Yacon.

Rooting Cuttings

I planted out half of one of the backyard raised beds with cuttings. I even recycled old plastic bags I had tucked away, and made it look nice and tidy.

Part was chilean guava cuttings.

Part was box hedge cuttings.

Unfortunately, the chickens have recently taken to scratching out this bed. The black plastic is in disarray and the cuttings are all dislodged and strewn everywhere. Never trust anyone who tells you that the chickens will magically not get anywhere you don't want them, and will listen when you tell them to scoot and stay away from something! Lies! Even if you rolled your eyes and didn't believe them, you still should have put netting over whatever it was. Two words: chicken enchiladas.

Planting & Rooting

This is a collection of recent things I have either planted out, or planted out to root for later transplanting.

Two fruit plants were donated to me, as they were not growing well in town. This is a Fantasia nectarine tree, a variety I already have one of. At worst, it's a backup tree, should the other cark it. It could also be used for grafting.

The other donation, was this blueberry. It's planted out alongside my other two varieties, one of which is Climax, and the other is Powder Blue. This variety of this new plant has been mislaid and will never be known.

I also traded a lot of cuttings and seeds online, and got two varieties of gooseberry. These were from plants themselves raised from cuttings, where the cuttings were from old farms or gold fields, in another part of the country. They should be older varieties, where most of the modern plants available are Pax and Invicta. I've got one Invicta out in my berry orchard. These are sitting in front of my north bed, which the elephant garlic cloves were planted out in.

Last year, I took cuttings from someone else's currant prunings. These I dipped in rooting hormone, and planted in a garden bed. And this year, given they grew roots in the garden bed, I transplanted them out in the field beside my purchased Magnus plant. I've also got a Cotswold Cross, an unknown red currant and a white currant. It just goes to show how easy it is to make your own plants, if you're willing to wait a year and have a source for genetic material to work from.

This year, I've got some gooseberry cuttings and black currant cuttings, which I've taken from someone else's prunings. The gooseberry are a thornless variety, and haven't had a problem with mildew. So not Invicta. The currants are likely Magnus again. Something I read, likely a fruit book I bought, recommended the black plastic to keep weeds down.

I also took two cuttings off my white currant, and have planted them out. But not photo. With a bit of luck, this will give me two more white currant plants next year. I should go out and see if I can get cuttings off the red currant. And for that matter, the Chilean cranberry. Hmm.

Propagation / 2013-2014 / Elderflower

Elderberries, elderflowers, they're something you can do something with. Champagne, cordial, and more. I've got an Elder tree on the north side of my house, but I decided I wanted some more. So as I drove around and passed them everywhere, I took note of the whichever ones looked like they had the most berries. Then I hopped the fence and took some green cuttings of new season growth. These were dipped in my inherited Grandfather's rooting hormone, and then popped in a pot each

The last picture showed their initial propensity to droop. I wondered if they were going to make it, but then they'd be up again the next morning. It was probably just an intial struggle of sorts.

A month later, they had settled in.

And a finally, two months after planting, they were obviously doing pretty well.

They will be planted out in another year or so. While my goal might be to have as much variety of plants on my property which provide edible growth, really, if I think about it, I can get as much elderberries or elderflowers as I want by driving around a bit. But then again, it's an interesting experiment in what sort of cuttings will grow.

"Invicta" gooseberry

I grew up with plums and gooseberries. We had a huge plum tree at home, down the back of the yard. And my grandparents basically ate gooseberries one way, which was stewed. I think they sourced them from some other relative, who had a bush we used to pick at, when we would go visiting on school holidays. There's no occasion I've ever been in a New Zealand shop and seen gooseberries for sale.

Looking for a gooseberry plant at a local nursery and I was told about how all the varieties of gooseberries we have here aren't doing so well here because of mildew. And how the one which is perhaps mostly resistant to mildew, is the American variety called "Invicta". Also, this variety is supposedly a new one, and as such is under protection so that you're not supposed to take cuttings or grow and sell the plants yourself.

The front of the label.

The back of the label.

In this case, two cuttings were taken from the plant in the next photo. These can be seen if you look hard enough. They seem to be taking okay, and have small amounts of green growth. I suspect the rules that protect someone who has developed a new variety, are more intended to protect against other commercial selling, not people pottering around in their own garden.

The planted bush, and two cuttings.

Garlic and blackcurrant mistakes

In a previous post, I mentioned digging up my garlic and moving it because it was supposed to be bad to grow alongside my broad beans. And in another previous post, I covered taking cuttings from gifted pruned blackcurrant branches.

On the bright side, when I took this photo, one blackcurrant cutting had started showing green growth. And since then, maybe one or two more have also started showing their own. But on the not so bright side, I had been planting the cuttings wrong. I should not have been trimming off all the buds.

Green appearing on a cutting.

One later cutting I made, the only one I did not trim the buds from, pretty much started showing green growth a week or two after being planted. And I've not been able to locate any source of information which says to take the buds off.

The garlic is not so bad. The following picture shows the well filled row of transplanted garlic on the right, and an occasional garlic shoot on the left alongside the bean plants. It turns out that transplanting the garlic did no harm at all, and that I also missed transplanting some.

Lost garlic growing.

I should note the sticks alongside the right hand row of garlic were just marking where the cloves were buried, and are not cuttings.