North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lee Reich <garden@leereich.com>]

The "etiolated shoot method" is often successful even with very hard to root plants. Here's an description of the method, excerpted from the appendix of my book, Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden,  

             The etiolated shoot method is a variation on softwood cuttings. This method has been successful in rooting stems of many plants otherwise difficult, previously impossible, to root (such as stems or shoots from mature apple trees.) In late winter, put an opaque tube---of roofing paper or aluminum foil, for example---around and extending a few inches beyond the terminal bud of a plant stem. This tube will exclude light from the shoot that grows from the terminal bud until that shoot appears at the end of the tube, at which time the shoot’s exposed leaves and stem will develop normally. A variation on this method is to completely shade a plant or stem before growth begins. When new, etiolated shoots are a few inches long, wrap each of their bases in some opaque material and gradually admit light to the plant or shoot. With either method, in late summer cut off the leafy shoots with their etiolated (bleached) basal portions and root them as you would any other softwood cutting. The etiolated shoot method is so successful because etiolated stems root so readily and because these etiolated stems, fed by their deep green parts developing later in light, are not starved for energy reserves.

Lee Reich, PhD

garden@leereich.com 

Books by Lee Reich:

The Pruning Book

Weedless Gardening

Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden

On Feb 1, 2007, at 12:49 PM, tanis grif wrote:

I also recall reading somewhere about the pre-wrapping technique for easier layering

or rooting of hardwood cuttings.  The author called it blanching, I think. 

Reasoning was that many of the "difficult to root" hardwood cuttings need a long

time to be convinced they are in soil, and these can be tricked by keeping the

desired root-producing section free of light for x# weeks-months before harvesting

the cuttings.

I wrap young trunks of young fruit trees in foil for the winter, if they don't have

other rodent guard.  Left on MM111 and Bud.118 too long, the foil will allow roots

to develop along the trunk!

A couple years ago I mounded up a multi-shoot OHxF rootstock which was 2 or 3 year

old wood then.  This is an attempt at stooling, altho NAFEXlisters kindly pointed

out that mounding for stooling is better done on new shoots in their first growing

season.  Haven't gotten around to digging this OHxF yet.  Will dig this spring, if

only to report back to the list.

--- rmelrose wrote:

Thanks Lon and Hans. I was thinking of this foil approach as a little

easier than traditional airlayering as you describe -- which I have done

long ago with houseplants. My problem is always time, and I thought that

wrappying ten branches in foil in late winter (which as I remember is the

suggested approach) would not take long! As I recall, injury and/or girdling

were not suggested as part of the idea, just that the exclusion of light

eventually induces a tendency to root. Of course it would be a full year

between start and rooted cutting.

Richard

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