| A month or so ago, I attended a fruit tree propagation workshop. Fruit tree propagation seems to be both easy and tricky at the same time. It's incredibly simple to cut off a branch of an existing tree, plop it in a pot of vermiculite, water it, and wait for it to take root. And it's tricky because the tree won't always take root. There are a few things you can do to improve your chances of success, but mostly you just have to wait and hope.
After many weeks of telling my cuttings to "grow vigorously" a few of them did:
The growth of leaves is not an indicator of success, but one of my pomegranate and one of my blackberry cuttings look like they have new branches growing! Hooray! I asked my friend Ian (my go-to fruit tree expert and the instructor of the fruit tree propagation workshop) what to do next. If they took root, he said, I can re-pot them and then start to ease them into moving outside. Don't put them in the sun just yet. Put them in the shade.
I lovingly got a pot ready to go with lots of worm poop and bat poop and all other things plants like. Then I pulled up my pomegranate cutting, hoping to see roots. And... nothing. Same with the blackberry. Nothing. So I put them back into the vermiculite. I'll just have to keep waiting and hoping. |
