As promised: Mulberry #propagation via Semi-Hardwood Cuttings under mist in your #nursery.

Here is the final result: 61 mulberry cuttings from 5 branches collected a couple days ago. Intermittent mist 10 seconds every 10 minutes.

First we start off with our branch. Choose this year's wood. It will still be somewhat green at least in our area. You also want it to be over 6 weeks old should you do this earlier in the summer.

I chose this particular cutting because I loved the leaf shape. I chose some others because of the leaf size and health. Some leaves where I were had a fungus growing on them as well, only choose healthy ones since they will be growing so close in the nursery.

Mulberry is a "2-node" plant. Each leaf node will either be a leaf or roots so we make a cut leaving 2 leaf nodes on each cutting:

Now to clean it up a bit. We need to leave a leaf on the part of the branch that was furthest from the roots. We remove some of the leaf to reduce the moisture loss, and on the side we'll root, we remove the leaf by tearing it off (to create some damage) and also scrape the bark. This will help rooting.

Dip in some rooting hormone. I'm using Dip-n-Grow liquid at Semi-hardwood strength this time of year. I get it off of Amazon: https://amzn.to/3YMXv9n (I'm an affiliate and this was an affiliate link. You can click here to support me and help a pleb buy more rooting hormone! 😉 ) $16 worth of the stuff has lasted me about 1600-2000 cuttings.

Now stick in the sand bed under mist and you're done! They should be rooted in 6-8 weeks.

I also snagged a juniper branch on our walk and stuck 15 of those cuttings as well:

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments!

#grownostr #plantstr #propagation #nursery #garden #permaculture