Propagating Fruiting Trees from Cuttings: A Guide to Cloning Your Favorite Varieties

It’s surprisingly easy to make new fruiting plants. Often, all you need is a piece to make a whole new plant. Absolutely love your neighbors fruit varieties? Ask them for a piece, and you can grow your own!.

A lot of plants can grow from small cuttings, sending out roots that turn into whole new plants if they get the right care.

Ways to Propagate Plants

There are a lot of different ways to grow plants from cuttings, and you should use the method that works best for the cutting you have.

Hardwood cuttings are taken from dormant, leafless plants in late fall or winter. Hardwood propagation works especially well with fruit tree cuttings (such as figs, mulberries, and quince) and vines (such as most grape varietals, kiwi fruit, and currants).

Although it isn’t strictly necessary, I find that dipping the tips of hardwood cuttings in a jar of rooting hormone before planting increases the chances of successful propagation and encourages faster root growth.

Greenwood cuttings (sometimes called softwood cuttings) are taken from the plant during the active growing season. It can be harder to grow plants from greenwood cuttings than from hardwood cuttings, but if you can get them to grow, you’ll get plants faster.

When plants are propagated by layering, the new plant stays partially attached to the mother plant while growing two separate root systems.

Some fruit-bearing plants, like strawberries, black raspberries, and blackberries, naturally layer, but different layering techniques can also be used to make it happen.

The six most common types of layering are:

• Tip layering
• Simple layering
• Trench layering
• Serpentine layering
• Mound or stool layering
• Air layering

This video will teach you how to use layering techniques and explain when, why, and how to use them:

Root cuttings are taken from the root system of the plant you want to propagate. It’s more likely that the cuttings will grow if they are taken in late fall or winter, preferably before the plants wake up from their winter sleep.

Blackberries and other brambles are good candidates for this method.

Crown division is an easy way to make more plants. Just cut the new plant off from the parent plant. A plant’s “crown” is where its stem meets its root system.

Strawberry plants, rhubarb, and pineapple can all be divided up and re-planted using this technique.

Success rates depend on the exact type of plant, so you’ll want to look up your particular plant.

One example is grapes, which are usually grown from hardwood cuttings. Most types of grapes do very well when grown this way. However, muscadine grapes only grow 2% of the time with hardwood cuttings and will only really work with greenwood cuttings.

Many choices exist for growing plants, especially when you think about the many ways a cutting can be grown into a new plant. I’m mainly talking about fruiting plants that you’d grow in your backyard or on a homestead, but succulents and indoor plants are often just as easy to spread.

Make sure you follow the steps given; depending on the type of fruit, some will work better than others.

The plants you want to grow should already be close by, either in your garden or in the yard of a neighbor. Getting your cuttings from a nearby source increases the chances that they will do well once you plant them.

You could also buy cuttings from a nursery or even order them online. Just be careful which variety you pick, because some will do better in your area’s hardiness zone than others.

With root cuttings or the tip layering method, blackberry cuttings can be grown in two different ways.

Pick roots from blackberry plants that are about the width of a pencil and are young and healthy.

Grab the roots as close to the crown as you can with gardening shears. Don’t take more than a third of the root system from the parent root system.

Carefully cut the roots into pieces that are 3 to 6 inches long, and trim off any ends that are sticking out.

Plant the cuttings about 2 to 3 inches apart and the roots in large pots filled with a mixture of peat and sand. Put a thin layer of compost or soil mixture over the cut surface so that it faces up. Give the cuttings a generous watering.

Place the pots in a warm location, such as cold frame or greenhouse. When the cuttings have rooted, they can be transferred outdoors and planted in your garden.

The other technique you can use for propagating blackberry cuttings is the tip layering method.

Unlike the root cutting method, tip layering doesn’t require any initial cutting to propagate the blackberry plant. You’ll want to begin this process in late summer or early fall, when the plant is actively thriving.

Just bend a young shoot from the plant down to the ground. Place the shoot on a small stake so that it can be covered with soil (a few inches is enough).

Let the plant grow through the fall and winter. The shoot should form its own roots during this time. You should be able to separate the new plant from the parent plant in the spring and plant it somewhere else in your garden.

I’ve written an in-depth post about propagating blueberries here, but I’ll outline the basic method for you here as well.

Take hardwood cuttings from first-year blueberry plants. You should have more success if you try when the plants are dormant, which means in the fall or winter but before spring. From my own experience, I know that older blueberry plants are harder to divide, but younger plants can take root pretty quickly.

Cut pieces that are about 6 inches long and 1/4 inch wide (about the thickness of a pencil).

Apply a rooting hormone to the tips of the blueberry stems. This step isn’t required, but it will help the plants grow.

Plant the cuttings about 2 inches deep in moist soil in deep pots and keep them somewhere warm and out of the way to avoid frost. Give them three to four months to grow strong roots before planting them outside in the spring.

Currants are another great candidate for propagation, especially when using hardwood cuttings. When a currant plant is still dormant, in the fall or very early spring, is the best time to take cuttings from it. Be sure to wait until the last leaves fall off and the stems are hard before taking cuttings in the fall.

From there, you’ll want to follow the instructions for propagating blueberries from hardwood cuttings. Once the currants have grown strong roots, they are ready to be moved. They do best outside in the spring or fall.

You can also divide currant bushes by crown division, which lets you make new plants almost right away from splitting up old ones.

So you can do this, you’ll have to dig up the whole plant and show the root ball. Take your time and carefully lift the roots out of the ground with your hands or garden forks.

Gently pour water over the roots with a garden hose or watering can to get rid of any dirt that is covering them.

Then, you can cut the roots in half with your hands or a sharp knife. The stems should have at least one bud so the plant can grow new leaves. Look at the roots and use gardening shears to cut off any dead or diseased parts of the roots and stems.

Put the cutting in the ground at the same depth and distance from the other currant bushes as the parent plant. If the cuttings come from another garden, take not of how deep the bushes were planted. Once the currants are in the ground, give them a lot of water and keep an eye on them until they are well established.

Taking hardwood cuttings is the safest way for me to grow healthy new elderberry plants when I want to spread the plant.

Elderberry plants go dormant from January to March where I live, which is when I take cuttings. Elderberry cuttings can be planted in your garden much sooner than blueberry cuttings. They only need a couple of weeks to take root.

When you move elderberries, remember that they need a lot of water and like cool, partly shaded spots over full sun.

I’ve written a complete guide to growing elderberries, including information on different varieties and pollination, if you’re interested in adding these potent medicinal berries to your garden.

With their bright summer ripening fruit, gooseberries are a beautiful addition to any garden.

If you want to grow gooseberries from cuttings, you can use the same methods as for currants. You can use hardwood cuttings or crown division. When transplanting gooseberries, plant them in a cool, moist spot in partial shade.

Those who have never heard of honeyberries (also called haskap berries, blue-berried honeysuckle, or sweetberry honeysuckle) say they look like long blueberries or tiny Italian plums and taste like a mix of blueberries and grapes. The fruit from a flowering honeysuckle, honeyberries are easy to grow from cuttings that have already rooted.

While it’s possible to grow honeyberries from fresh cuttings, I’ve never had much luck using this method. Instead, I recommend buying cuttings that have already rooted. This way, you can grow them in a pot for 1 to 2 years before planting them outdoors and you already know the roots are healthy and established. Despite their fussiness about growing new roots, honeyberries aren’t very particular about the type of soil they’re planted in.

Although I haven’t tried propagating pineapple from their tops, it looks like a fun undertaking. To make a new pineapple plant, twist off the top of a fresh pineapple. This will separate the crown from the base of the pineapple. Cut off any extra fruit that is stuck to the crown and peel back the leaves closest to the base, leaving about an inch or two of stem showing. You’ll notice little brown nubs along the stem, which is where new roots will grow from.

The next step is to let the pineapple crown dry out for at least two days and no more than a week to keep it from going bad. The cutting can then be planted directly in potting soil, preferably a mixture used for cacti and succulents. Unless you live in a warm, sunny climate, it’s advisable to keep the pineapple growing in a container. It can be put outside in the summer and then brought inside to a sunny spot when it gets cold.

It will probably be two to three years before your pineapple plant bears fruit, and it will only be able to grow one fruit at a time. However, I think this would be a fun and patient homeschool project.

Raspberries are another type of fruit that should be propagated from hardwood cuttings that have already rooted. For black or purple raspberry plants you already have in your garden, you can also make more by tip layering them like we talked about above for blueberries.

Verticillium wilt is a fungus that grows in gardens that used to have nightshade plants. If you do decide to propagate black and purple raspberry plants, you should plant them at least 300 feet away from red raspberry plants to stop it from spreading.

Crown division in the spring is an easy way to make more rhubarb plants. It is also thought to be one of the best ways to keep rhubarb plants healthy and producing healthy stalks. In fact, rhubarb plants should be split up every 5 or 6 years, when they are just starting to wake up from their dormant state. Putting the rhubarb’s crown 1 1/2 to 2 inches deep in the ground is pretty much the same way you do it with currants. Give the rhubarb plenty of water to keep the roots healthy and protect new transplants from frost.

Whether you know sea buckthorn as sea berry, sand thorn, or sha-ji, you can propagate hardwood cuttings using dormant wood without too much effort. Instead of planting the cuttings directly in soil, they should first be soaked in water to encourage root growth (change the water daily to prevent stagnation). You don’t have to soak the entire cutting, just the first 2/3s, and you should see roots growing after a week or so.

Once you can see roots, you can plant the cuttings in pots to grow indoors. It will take the cuttings about two months to really take off. After that, they can be moved outside.

Strawberries grow quickly if you don’t help them. Their roots are tough and not very complicated, which is why you can order them online from the other side of the world and they’ll still be in good shape when they get there. Standard crown division is the way to go, though, if you already have plants or a friend who wants to shrink their strawberry patch. Early spring is the best time to do this so that the plants have time to recover before the growing season starts. Should have strawberries the next year if the plant stays healthy. The first year you might not get any fruit.

This guide to transplanting strawberries will take you through the entire process, with tips for spacing and choosing the best plants to divide.

Propagated Fruit Tree Cuttings Update And Test