Trailer gal, You might be interested in my experience with rooting a variety on it's own roots. A few years ago I buried a young apple tree so that it's grafted rootstock was below ground level. Then I heaped dirt around the young trunk and kept it well watered. It developed roots. I don't remember how long it took but it happened. I wonder if it would do any good to ring the bark. I never had any luck rooting cuttings. Frank

As you know, apple cuttings ideally need to be grafted. I have rooted just the apple cuttings without grafting, but in doing so I had many cuttings fail. The problems I had were the cutting I received were not ideal in the first place  they had some powdery mildew on them and some of them were small in size. Another problem I had was excess moisture due to last yearÂs rains, which contributed to cutting failure. If you are going to try cuttings without grafting, get good size healthy ones. I rooted mine in peat. If you are in an area of high humidity, you might add some Perlite for drainage.

If it's laying on the ground, maybe you could pile some wood shavings or sawdust over some small limbs and let it root while attached to the tree. Keep it moist. May need to wound the limbs and dust on some rooting hormone. I know that to make rootstock people will plant seedlings and heap sawdust around the base to cause "stooling"...when rooted those suckers are severed from the parent tree and bench grafted to make new trees for orchard plantings. If I were you, and knew anyone who could graft, I would get them to graft some on an existing apple tree to prevent the loss of this old variety.

I would love to know if this really works. I am very tempted to do this because my first challenge was to grow an apple tree ,cross growing when seeds had grown so high into the tree stem and then put another variety of apple with this by bonding the stems together with hormone powder and grow on from there.

Hi,

We have a fairly young apple tree, maybe 4 years old now. I have fed and sprayed and we have about 50 apples on a 10-12 foot tree. Is it possible to dig up the smaller trees or "suckers" as my Husband calls them and start new trees? If so, could you please tell me how to accomplish that. Many Thanks from an apple lover in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont!

I've found that propagation from cuttings is harder than grafting. You have to keep the space around the leaves moist while maintain only a slightly moist media around the leaf node. Until the stem sends out roots (several months) the only moisture the stem will get is from the moisture absorbed through the leaves. Plan on grafting several scions in the early spring using a dwarf or semi-dwarf rootstock. You'll have some nice fruit-bearing trees in about 5 years versus the standard that you'll get from the slipped cutting.