I have found that the plants with tighter internodes
seem to be easier to root than others. I can root
kotohime maples with extreme ease, other maples not as
well.

On bottom heat: This is tricky and can sometimes kill
rather than stimulate a plant. I use manure and
sawdust to create heat in the bottom of the rooting
container. This means you have to have a deeper
container than usual because you do not want the new
roots to hit the manure, the cuttings will get
fertilizer burn and die.

I am using recycled styrofoam cold chests with holes
in the bottom, sawdust, manure, sawdust layers, then
my pearlite. The contaners are about 8 to 10 inches
in depth. With this system, I do not allow cuttings
to harden off in the cutting bin, I transplant
earlier.

With this system and a mini green house that gets
misted only twice a day, I have been rooting many more
things this year. The other was containers on hot
concrete with transulecent palastic lids, sort of a
mini terrarum effect. This needed more tending and
hand watering than I had time to do, but I had quicker
rooting becasue of the heat.

More maintenace but no inflated electric bill.

Kitsune Miko

--- Brent Walston wrote:
At 09:12 AM 7/27/04 -0400, you wrote:
Oaks are extremely difficult to root from cuttings,
better leave those for
experts and grow them from seed (acorns) which is
very easy. Some maples
are easy, others difficult, it depends on the
species. Semi hardwood
cuttings in summer is the preferred method for most
cuttings these days.
This is explained in the Cuttings article that I
pointed out to you.
Willows don't need hormone at all. Most maples
require a fairly high IBA
content, but again it varies with the species.


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