I'm trying to root cuttings from my fruit trees using the growth and some hardwood cuttings that were taken during my mid-winter pruning in January. I potted them up on March 10 using rooting hormone on one group and a honey-water mix on the other. You can read about it here:
https://steemit.com/gardening/@ruggedhomestead/rooting-cuttings-or-just-forcing-growth
Each week I'll post a brief update with a photo to record the progress of this experiment. My goal is to rapidly increase the number of fruit trees I have in my food forest at little to no cost. While I will also be buying fruit trees to plant, if I can use cuttings too it will exponentially help my efforts.
Here is the current state of the rooted cuttings:
As can be seen, the group of plantings on the left seems to be growing much more vigorously than the group on the right. I'm not sure if its because that's the group that got the rooting hormone or some other reason. And again, I don't know if this is just "forcing" growth or actual growth that will result in roots forming; I'm just winging it here to see what can be achieved.
These cuttings are all in a homemade potting mix of peat moss, compost, and perlite, and they are receiving bottom heat from seedling mats. The mix is kept moist and the room they're in has relative high humidity. Let's see how this progresses over time.