North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Douglas Woodard <dwoodard@becon.org>]

Ross, methods of rootstock production vary enormously with species and 
even with clone.

For example, in common apple some cultivars root easily as (dormant?) 
cuttings and some have been favoured in for example Ireland for hundreds 
of years for that reason (there this class of apple cultivars is called 
in English "pitchers").

Some cultivars (for example Ottawa 3) are quite difficult to root from 
cuttings. Even with softwood cuttings under mist, the choice of 
propagating wood is quite important (juvenile wood or not).

"The Grafter's Handbook" by R. J. Garner has a chapter on rootstock 
production methods.

I think that stooling is the usual method for apple rootstocks.

There are standard texts on plant propagation, like Hartman and Kester, 
which you can probably find in most libraries.

Propagation is a big and technical field. I suggest that you read a book 
or two, narrow down what you need to find out that you can't find in the 
books, and then maybe ask questions on the list. List members are not 
going to be enthused at the idea of writing a textbook for you, or even 
a review article.

I believe that there is a list somewhere devoted to tissue culture for 
amateurs, if you get really ambitious.

Maybe have a look at
http://www.bookfinder.com
to get an idea of the range of books.

It's worth being careful about the selection of rootstocks, because 
there are plenty of traps. Nurseries have a habit of growing what they 
can sell, for God only knows what vagaries of the marketplace, not what 
would be good for particular customers. The customers they are seriously 
interested in are the ones that buy in lots of 10,000s.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada



rossdaman00dub@juno.com wrote:
> I was wondering about creating root stalk from cuttings, does any one 
> know how to start this process
>
> Ross