I’m excited to see your results for the larch. If you do manage to root it I’d like to know the methods you used. Keep us posted!

Also, you say put the clear plastic tote with the cuttings on the heat mat. Wouldn’t that layer of plastic on the bottom of the tote end up suppressing the heat coming from the mat?

Of all the methods I researched on rooting larix, most of them had dismal results, so lets put 'em under the blue lights during the winter and see what happens. :-)

Hard/firm plastic has a very low 'R' value. On a cold surface, like cement, plastic will get very cold, on a warm surface like a heat mat, it will warm up nicely. :-)

And remember, heat will drive moisture out of your media and anything above low 70'sF, will basically cook your media dry in a short amount of time.

Using a tote is nice in this way, all the wet media is at the bottom of the tote (3"-4" deep?) and you can monitor the moisture inside very easily. When water/moisture gets too low, you just pour more water directly into the media and it spreads out along the bottom so everything gets watered.

Use the lid or stretch wrap over the top to contain the moisture and this keep the humidity high.

You can get many, many cuttings inside a small tote.

I bought this one at WM for under$4. 12"x8"x11" deep but a shallower one (8"?) would work just as well.

Edit: changed 2"-3" deep media to 3"-4" deep. you don't want the stems submerged in water.

I see what you’re saying now. But if you just leave the water on the bottom after watering the pots, won’t it create a risk for rotting since the water is directly in contact with the bottom of the pot and to the media which will keep it constantly wet? Is it a good idea to dump the excess water or just leave it?

Also it is ok for the lid to be white and no light entering from above? I mean I can use a wrap over it but if there’s a lid I rather just put it on and be done with but just want to know if the lack of light from directly above makes any difference

You don't use pots.

Just put the media 3-4" deep, directly into the bottom of the tote and stick your cuttings directly into the media.

Being the tote is clear, you can see how high the water is by looking at the side. After a while, you'll get to know how much water to add to keep about an inch of water in the bottom.

The more tightly you seal the top the longer it takes for the water to 'disappear'.

You can get totes like mine with clear tops but if you're not using artificial lighting, it's a moot point.

Okay, change of plan.

Because snow is making it very difficult to get at my very few miniature spruce and abies cuttings. And it appears there will be sufficient quantities of pine and larch broom material. I'm planning on adding more bags of those and eliminating Tsuga, Juniper, Picea and Abies.

Plan 'C'.

Also, from my research, Larix may be more prone to fungus being deciduous, so instead of having mixed bags of evergreen and deciduous, I'll keep same species/same treatments in common bags, which will make treating the Larch for fungus easier, if necessary.

Did you do that last year with all your cuttings? Wouldn’t that be of greater concern for rot when the water just sits there and keeps the media soggy all the time? How did you manage to not let that happen?

My rooting set up ran at 100% relative humidity all season, everything was saturated for months, that's what you want.

If you have 4" deep media with cuttings stuck about 1" to 1-1/2" into the media and less than 1" deep water in the bottom, you should be fine.

The heat mat will cause the water to evaporate and rise up into the media and the atmosphere above but by nature the better draining media will also allow air (oxygen ) to accompany the moisture which is the 'blend' you're looking for when rooting conifers.

Try it both ways. You can get plenty of extra cuttings with all the trees you have so just do some the way you think, using pots and do others in the tote. See which one wins! :-)

If you're worried about rot, just use some of your physan20 in the tote, every couple of weeks or just don't worry about it at all, if they're extra cuttings and they fail its nbd. :-)

FWIW: With more snow in the forecast, I'm pleased to announce both brooms were acquired today without incidence. We had a frozen snow mobile path to walk on, out to the pine broom and I only broke through the crust on top of the hip deep snow twice while getting from the highway out to the larch broom. We felled the pine tree and larch broom was only 15ft. high, well within reach of my pole saw. I will sleep good tonight. :-)

Bill, I'm not familiar with all your terminology. What is a broom? I tried looking it up. I did manage to root 2 native Lonicera cuttings last year, and I think 1 sassafras sucker/cutting. I'm finding that buying shrub seedlings is nice. So far I've gotten seedlings of spicebush and the native Euonymus running strawberry bush. Will be getting some Aralia racemosa and other things in the spring. I need to look for some bald cypress cones.

Hort slang for 'Witches Broom'. An anomaly occurring on both deciduous and evergreen trees. Generally used when grafting dwarf or miniature trees of that species.

I noticed cones on both of these witches brooms and don't know if they're any good. I already have quite a few seeds in the stratification phase so am reluctant to start more but will have to make an exception for these.

These projects have a way of 'Growing' somehow. :-)

So, you graft a witches broom to a rootstock and you get a dwarf shrub? Won't the rootstock send up shoots too? I have heard of witches brooms before. Can a witches broom get another witches broom haha?

And incompatibility issues can arise on certain species between root stock and scions. But so far, grafting is the only way to make trees from witches brooms of certain species.

That's why I'm trying this blue light method. Pine is considered very hard to root and Larch is, well, popsicle sticks. So while I'm not expecting much success from this rooting attempt, the only way to find out is to try.

I do expect to root some Taxus and then there's the larch seed.... :-)

Bill, what benefit is the blue light for?

From what I understand, light in the blue spectrum, causes the plants (conifers) to produce auxins.

Jon Genereaux, over at hidden lakes garden, has been working with this method for a while now. https://conifersociety.org/uploads/coniferquarterly/fall-2017/Fall-2017.pdf

Jay , you have much to learn ,my friend.....hang around this forum for a while

yes , a which's broom can get a broom

yes a grafted dwarf will stay dwarf

ron

Ron, I'll try to hang with you guys more haha. Bill, I was thinking you were using LCD light. Are you just using a powerful grow light with a lot of blue spectrum. I have a 600 watt lamp and I always try to get the metal halide bulbs with the highest blue spectrum.

Mine are LED flood lamps from GE. 20 chips per bulb, that produce light in the 450 nm light spectrum. 100 w. equivalent. I have 6 of them to cover a 9x20 heat mat area. Very intense blue. you don't want to expose your eyes to them at all.

Well, here we go again. Got all the cuttings put to bed. See you in July! lol

Here's the final site map of the chamber.

View inside chamber. Bags are already steamed up and soggy inside. :-)

All looks good Bill. I hope you have great results. Maybe I can add a couple of those blue lights to my setup.

This is my setup that I just did today. Took chamaecyparis obtusa cuttings and juniperus sargentii ‘glauca’. When I took the cuttings I had to include about 1-2 in of hardwood on the bottom, otherwise the cutting would’ve been too short. I’m pretty doubtful though, although I’m confident in my setup, I feel like I didn’t take the cuttings correctly. My hinoki has brown scaly tips which I think are pollen cones so that might inhibit rooting. Or would it? Idk, otherwise then why would most growers take conifer cuttings in winter if they have pollen cones at that time.

I sanitized the heck out of every material I used for this project. I soaked my pot of 5 parts perlite and 1 parts play sand in a bucket of physan 20. So I didn’t water after sticking the cuttings in. When I stick the cuttings in, I’m not sure if it’s ok to have the green part of the cutting in the media or only hardwood inside and keep the green part above surface since keeping the softwood in the media might encourage rot. So many questions. Idk how you guys all do it right.

This is the hinoki with what it looks like a pollen cone. Those small brown tips

Looks good Heruga. Now I remember why I never have grown mushrooms in the expensive mushroom growing kit that I bought. Trying to sterilize before a spawn transfer is a living nightmare lol. I doubt the pollen comes matter but then I know nothing about these species.

Looks good to me also, Heruga. Don't sweat the details. :-)

The Thuja o. I used last year, sprouted male strobulis after they were stuck but still got roots.

Keep up the good work! And keep us updated. :^)

Yeah guys, I said I was mixing my promix with granite, but it's not granite, it's pumice. Maybe it was wishful thinking.

Pumice would be way lighter in weight than granite. And more porous than perlite.

I just used peat and perlite because I still have 3/4 bale of peat I purchased a couple of years ago. And the perlite was cheap. Not to mention that combo worked for me last year. :-)

I've never used pure perlite but heard of people that use that exclusively.

I like this brand I've been getting at Menards. Nice & coarse with no additives.

If I see pumice anywhere, I'll buy some.

One week after sticking, I gave my cuttings some pure CO2.

This time I opened the valve on the bottle and just gave them a 'Pssst' in each bag, instead of a 'Pssssssssst' like last time. :^)

I won't do this again anytime soon now that I know you can overdo it.

I knew were serious, but wow, that's really hard core man haha.

I keep telling myself, it's a hobby! :-)

I read somewhere that CO2 helps prevent mold/fungus. I don't know how true that is but as long as I have all the stuff left over from last year, I thought it wouldn't hurt to give a little shot to everything, initially.

I've read too that cuttings/plants in sealed containers, tend to have a net increase in oxygen over time.

That's one thing I like about the zip lock freezer bags. You not only start out with new, clean containers for the pots. With the attached hose, I can partially exchange the air inside the bags without completely dropping the humidity down to ambient room levels. And then have to wait for it to build up again. I'm a firm believer of keeping the humidity high. :-)

After this initial dose of CO2, I'll go back to what I did last year, releasing a portion of the air inside the bags, weekly and blowing them back up by mouth. This takes advantage of the 4-5% co2 in exhaled breath and may even help keep fungus at bay by partially 'airing out' the bags occasionally. It's much safer than injecting raw CO2 into the bags without some sort of meter, which I found out about last year.

I don't have any scientific way of proving this theory but many growers/rooters release extra CO2 into their grow rooms for improved results.

With several nights in the single digits to below zero temps, the ambient room temp in the basement is 55dF. A little warmer than I would like but a better than last year. The inside of the chamber is @ 62dF during the day with the lights on, again too warm but several degrees cooler than the 68dF it stayed last year. I attribute that to the improved ventilation built into the new chamber.

Checking, checking, checking. :^)

I set the heat mat down to 68dF last last night.

It was set at 69d but I noticed the temp sensor would rise as high as 71.4, even after the thermostat had shut the mat off. So a degree lower now in an attempt to keep things as cool as possible in the chamber. Now the thermostat display bounces around between 68 to 69.9.

I noticed that bag #1 appeared to be less inflated than the rest, indicating a possible air leak somewhere in the system. That bag has the heat indicator sensor inserted in the side of the bag and is the one I had trouble with, leaking air last season, although much worse than this year.

This year, I made a fitting to prevent leakage and wrapped foam rubber tape around the heat sensor cable, then forced the tape/cable into the fitting.

To make sure that wasn't where the problem lies, I put some silicon caulking where the cable enters the fitting to make sure the foam tape wasn't letting air past. It really isn't that big of a deal but it wasn't hard to slide the bag out and apply the caulk.

Checking temperatures this morning, It was 54d F at the back of the chamber, overnight without the lights. Which is so much better than last season and will hopefully slow top growth of the cuttings over time. (Please ignore the high tech equipment, :^) it at least gives me some idea about what's going on).

One improvement I added to the chamber this year was a trough along the top edge, along the back. It's level in height with the bottom of the east window.

Hard to see exactly from the picture but any cool air coming off the window glass flows down, gravity feed, directly into the chamber. It might cause the heat mat to run a little more but cool air flowing over the tops of the bags should help keep temps down and delay top growth. :-)

For now, this has worked better than last year and is about as good as I can come up with considering it's a home grown set up. :-)

Due to concerns voiced by another rooting amateur on this forum. ;-)

I thought I'd look into my cuttings to see what's going on. 18 days since sticking.

When I looked into the bag of Taxus, I noticed one small fuzzy ball of mold, near the soil at the bottom of one stem of the 'Tantaun'.

Upon opening the bag, you could see there was some browning/yellowing of the 'Tantaun' that I believe was caused by the CO2 treatment. And plants that are not 100% healthy are more susceptible to attacks by mold. There also was a few black spots on some of the needles.

The 'Hicksii' seemed fine but the 'Tantaun' pot (right) was directly below the input port for the CO2 so no doubt the CO2 sort of 'rained down' onto that pot. Just a theory.

The Larix looked okay, no mold that I could identify anyways. You could see beginning of 'bud breaking' at some of the branches. Makes me think I should've waited until later before sticking these but time will tell. Might help them photosynthesize during winter? Go Larix!!! :-)

When I looked at the pine, you could see a bit of browning on a few of the needles, this too could be from the CO2 so I'm done with raw CO2 treatments. Too difficult to control.

Anyways, with all cuttings looking reasonably acceptable, I sprayed all pots using a 10:1 water and hydrogen peroxide (3%), left the bags open for a while to let the H2O2 dissipate some and placed them back on the heat mat (bags/pots placed directly on the heat mat).

One thing I noticed using a heat mat with thermostat is: You set it at a temp, say 69dF, and the sensor is place through the side of a pot, say 1" from the bottom of the pot. Okay, when things are running, the temperature at the bottom of the pot that's touching the mat, is not the same temperature as the sensor which is one inch above the mat, in the soil. Sort of a lag between when the heat turns off and on. Just a curious observation.

I plan to do a partial exchange of air in the bags every 4 days instead of a week apart as originally planned. And possibly use a fungal retardant every week or two depending on.

Evidently blue light in the 450nm range does nothing to stop fungus & mold. :-)

Uber high humidity rules. lol! :o)

Hmm maybe the taxus I took cuttings from wasn’t a healthy one. It was planted close to my apartment foundation and was sheared to make a cone shape. Are you still keeping your taxus cuttings or did you discard it? I kept mine in but worried the mold will spread to my other cuttings. So hydrogen peroxide solution acts as a good fungicide/preventative?

Also, is it ever ok to ‘prune’ your cuttings? I didn’t exactly prune it but I removed some of the lower needles so it is not touching the media. But that exposes the open wound to the air and I see that some of the mold forms up in those areas. So I guess my question is, can you have any open wounds on your cuttings that won’t be submerged in the media?

I rip the needles off my cuttings about 1/3 up the stem. This wounds the stem which is recommended in most cases. I'm sure mine sticks out of the ground but I've never had a problem with it.

Mix your H2O2 at least 10:1 or it might burn the needles. Also don't close up the bags or tote right away to give the peroxide time to dissipate. It's not a permanent cure but nothing is and if I have to do it again in a week or two I will.

The Tantaun that molded on me, rather slightly, looked a little yellow when I took cuttings, it may have had a little 'winter burn'? Dunno but I think I'll keep it.

Remember, The only time mold is a problem is if you don't do anything about it.

My set up is a little on the 'warm' side with 600 watts of lights over them, so I'll have to keep a close eye on things and act if I see any mold looking my way. :-)

52dF in the chamber tonight with the lights off. Best temp so far.

Report:

Interesting observation:

The day after I treated that little ball of fuzz in the Taxus bag, I looked again and it was still there. So I gave it a shot of fungicide this time and looked again today, yup still there, although a little 'sick' looking.

It looked like a tiny branch, growing at the bottom of the cutting, had mold, so I was going to remove it. When I reached in the bag with my 8" modified Hemostat, it turned out to be a small piece of Taxus branch that had broken or fallen off when I stuck the cuttings and was separate from the cutting itself, so I plucked it out.

I already knew any dead parts of a plant would mold, that's natures way.

The rest of the Taxus looked great, no other signs of mold, so I gave that bag a spray of Daconil and closed the bag and turned the lights back on. 8^)

Over 3 weeks now since sticking. There has been a slight increase in the size of the buds breaking on the Larix but overall I have to be happy with how it's going. Temps outside have been mild with high twenties and low thirties (F) during the day and not much colder at night (odd for January here), so I've been opening the window over the chamber just crack so cooler air can flow down around the bags. Hope that helps deal with the added heat produced by the lights.

Partially replacing the air inside 2 gal. bag is not a big deal but now that I'm doing it every fourth day, I'm taking out ~32 oz of old air, from a 256 oz bag, with a 2 oz syringe. That can be a bit monotonous, considering I do 5 bags.

I thought about stopping at the vets office to see if he had a larger one but remembered we have a cheap, plastic manual air pump to fill basketballs & such.

Easier than I thought, pulled the cylinder, flipped it around backward, reassembled and now the pump 'sucks' air instead of compressing it. :-) Put a plastic piece over the 'needle' to form a seal with the hose end and now I have a real time saver.

One stroke can pull up to 20 oz. so a stroke and a half and the bag is limp and ready to refill. I should get another pump to use for 'filling' the bags with. I would lose the advantage of any extra CO2 but would still be 'fresh air' with normal amounts of CO2 to put back in the bag. Just thought I'd share. :-)

Just a follow up.

I ended up buying another pump ($4). I'm glad bc it took me only 5 minutes to remove a quart or so of air from all 5 bags and replace with normal room air. The white fitting came with it.

Now when my grandson comes over and asks where's the pump for the basketball, i'm covered. :-)

Coldest night this winter so far (-26F) and I've had the window above the chamber open a crack (<1/8") and with the east wind, it felt like a small refrigeration/freezer unit coming off that end of the window.

I closed the window last night for fear the temperature would get too cold inside the chamber and the heat mat would run continuously trying to keep up. The temperature sensor in the pot was down to <67f at one point and ambient air temp was under 50f at bed time.

//////////////////

Checking the Pinus, a lot of browning of the tops and I don't think it's bc of the one application of CO2 so it might just be one of the reasons it's difficult to root pine.

The Taxus looks very green and healthy. Not very much budding, if any.

Larix, not all cuttings are budding. Don't know if some are dead or it's been cool enough so they haven't started to grow on top. ~ 15% budding? No mold.

////////////////////

Even though there's not much ambient light coming in the window this time of year, I realized my shorter 'table top' model rooting chamber, will no longer allow the morning sun, that comes in that window, directly into the chamber.

So I had to cosine :-) and went to the second hand store. For $3 I acquired an old, 'in the wall' medicine chest, that has a heavy plate glass mirror in the door. Very easy to disassemble those 'old style' steel cabinets, so removed the glass and sent the rest to recycling.

A little ambient diffused window light, in addition to the blue light shouldn't hurt anything for now and by May, I'll remove the curtain and allow direct window light to the 'blue light' for a couple of hours each day. :-)

Update:

2 months and about a week since sticking.

I was reading about rooting Taxus in my Dirr and Heuser reference book. It told about how it only takes 8 to 9 weeks to have fully branched roots. That made me think it's been about that long for mine. Of coarse I didn't use any rooting hormones at all for the Taxus.

I really didn't want to disturb the cuttings bc I only have around 9 or 10 cuttings of each type of Taxus, per pot. But there was a small ~1"L. cutting in one corner of the Tauntan pot. Loosened the media with a pick an washed it off under the faucet.

A couple calluses and several roots starting to push radially around the stem. Pretty good, I think, for not using any rooting hormones and such a small one. :-)

I don't know if this is an indication of what the larger cuttings are doing but it's progress. :-)

Pinus doesn't look too good. All tops browned for some reason, except one green cutting that has been extending it's end bud to about an inch long so far.

Larix is hard to tell. There's some early top growth that has since shriveled and died, some haven't put out any new growth and then there's a few with new green needles that are slowly expanding and look quite healthy.

Bottom heat bouncing around from 67.4F to 69.7, ambient room temp 55dF with cooler window air flowing off the window, over the bags continuously.

That's all for now. :o)

Early Update:

Turned off the heat mat today and the blue lights.

Pinus banksiana cuttings dried out and turned brown after two months. I should've been more observant because I don't know for sure if I got the best parts of that broom and was surprised when they dried out so fast, being in a high humidity environment. Parts of the broom left out in the woods was still green when I saw it the other day.

Larix laricina cuttings looked good for two months and a percentage of them pushed green sprouts. They went like that for over a month, then sort of dried out. I don't know if shutting off the heat earlier would've helped but it's something I would do if I try it again.

Taxus (Tantaun and Hicksii) All look good. Lush and green with scattered, small amounts of new growth.

I read that once plants begin to root, bottom heat can be removed and the mirror mounted above the chamber provides fairly bright ambient light for 12 hours a day.

The blue lights too are the catalyst to initiate rooting so I'm thinking the plants don't need that anymore and are photosynthesizing real light by now.

I haven't looked for roots but shutting down the heat and lights should be almost like putting the pots outside to finish off, albeit a little early. I can't put them outside because we're still not past our last frost date of May 30th.

It was 62df in the basement today with bright ambient light. Was 55d most of the winter.

No pictures yet but will try to update again once I check for roots.

Just for kicks I took a picture of morning sunlight only at the east window. It gets more ambient in less than an hour but is fairly bright between 7am and 9am before the sun moves to the South.

Spring is coming on strong so I got ready to place the cuttings outside.

The pine and the larix was a complete flop. I pulled some of the cuttings from the media and I didn't find any sign except possibly beginnings of a couple of callus.

So not wanting to include all those failed pots in with my rooted Taxus, I used my small tote container and am only saving the 2 Taxus pots for finishing off.

Put them out in my favorite bright shade spot on the north side of the house.

6-8-2020

Checked the tote today. It appeared to be staying quite moist and there is no venting so was a little concerned.

The Tantaun yew (right) looked a bit yellowed, the Hicksii was still dark green.

Lifted the first Hicksii cutting and was a little disappointed to find roots barely enough to pot.

But seeing roots and seeing root tips at the pots drain holes, I just dumped the whole Hicksii pot into the water tub. I figured I could pot and keep under high humidity to finish out. But the rest were much better. Seems like the shorter cuttings were better than the longer ones.

Hicksii yew: (most were like the ones below).

A lot of callus on some of the stems but the roots came through okay so that's what matters.

Tantaun yew:

So, washed pots and opened the bark mix made 12-17-2019 and potted up 8 hicksii and 4 tanaun (2 trays of 6, 4" pots (Quart?)).

Watered them down good and put them out on the shade table for now. The bags will retain very high humidity and I'll leave the bags on for the next month to give the roots time to further develop, opening the bags occasionally for air and watering.

They'll spend the winter in the cold frame after they harden off and be getting a little partial sun until then. :-)

Update: 7-8-2020

One month since potting up the taxus and a week+ of gradual venting the bags, I removed the bags completely yesterday afternoon. 1/4" of rain last night with most nights @100% RH and fairly high RH during the day should be a good time for this.

The Tauntons were somewhat yellowing but the hicksii were still dark green. Seems like yew move along faster at this stage than some of the other conifers I've rooted.

A little late but congrats again :) you sure are acing this. I’m thinking of taking taxus cuttings soon in the summer. I have no luck with winter cuttings so I want to attempt active growth cuttings. Not sure if they’ll root or live through winter but I’m gonna try

7-30-2020

The 8 hicksii cuttings are much more robust looking than the tauntan cuttings with no sign of browning or lost needles and are rooted solidly. I pulled them out of the shade for picture and put them back afterwards.

I discarded 2 of the Tauntan, appeared to be root rot. The two that are still here (lower left and upper right). The upper right is a shorter cutting and looks flawless with new growth. The lower left had a couple brown branch tips and has lost a few needles but is rooted well and generally healthy, so we'll see.

8/24/2020

Most of the taxus put forth at least some new growth. After some trimming the Taunton with the brown tips appears to have settled in and is setting buds and is the only one that didn't send out new growth, at least none that I noticed.

10-4-2023: update.

3 of the 6 Hicksii yews from cuttings died for unknown reasons this summer.

The 3 that survived appear healthy and are growing in a semi-shady area. ~7-9" tall now.

90dF high on Sunday and Monday. 1" of rain last night. Highs in the high 50's today.

I can't say the drought is over, but it's much improved the last couple of weeks. ;-)

Yeah, grass looks better.

Normally, I would say haha about the grass comment but with high to mid 50' for high temperatures and near freezing for lows, I'm done mowing for this season.

:^)