On My Own Roots
Garden Home
Nurturing a full spectrum of named cultivars for the landscape
Edible and ornamental plants for the garden home
Planning to eventually specialize in trees, all grown on their own roots!
Encouraging fantastic visual effects combined with healthy biodiversity in your garden design
Made possible by knowing the mature characteristics of any cloned cultivar
I hope you like the informational tools I have to offer!
What We’re About
From simple homeowners to Backyard Grower to up and coming Honeymoon Tree Farmers…
We are creating a rainbow arboretum of our new landscape tree propagation farm, that celebrates the best spectrum of cultivars I can discover! Starting with a full selection of edibles and ornamentals from grafted stock (in the case of trees, usually), the idea is to be propagating every cultivar on its own roots. This means cuttings where possible and layering of harder-to-root types where not, along with the discovery of how to make both of these systems work well.
I seek for flowers or color highlights in every season throughout the year, highly taste-rated edibles, often variegated or laceleaf foliage, a full range of bloom or texture choices, and fascinating new or exceptional cultivar qualities in every type of plant I offer. I believe that if you’re going to choose a specimen plant for your yard to become a permanent, thriving fixture - especially when your space is limited to just picking one or a few favorites - then being able to identify the one (or more) that suits you just right is definitely the way to go.
As well, amazing visual effects along with other helpful benefits can be attained by planting in diverse rainbow groupings or multi-cultivar lines rather than just mono-clone plantings. However, since larger plants can actually be much more difficult or expensive to coordinate this with in a grand design, I’m bringing my findings and offerings together into a single organized place in order to share them with you. Just in case an idea pursued here sparks your interest also. :)
An All-Season Rainbow of Color
Here’s where I keep record of blooming times, foliage highlights, harvest days, significant weather events, propagation cycles, and creative milestones at the farm.
Watch and discover with us as new cultivars start coming into bloom! New fruits start to produce! And all manner of leafy plants and grouped themes get mature enough to show us their unique charms. It’s like being able to zoom in on and identify all the hidden treasures popping up in the landscape throughout the year!
Share the joy with us as all manner of new and old flora come into their seasonal color, and the design of the arboretum landscape gets more complete and mature every year.
Why go to so much effort for own-root tree propagation?
Isn’t grafting the way it’s done?
Benefits of own-root clonal propagation:
Trees have no potential issues with graft incompatibility at propagation time or in future years, and thus can have considerably longer lifespans
If hard winter conditions cause the main tree to die back or be broken down to the ground, whatever sprouts come up from the roots will still be the same cultivar
No graft scars and unsightly mismatch of bark colors also makes it bonsai-friendly for close-up viewing
Ultimate size of tree is accurate to the chosen cultivar and not artificially influenced by the rootstock is it grafted to
Unless uniquely proven otherwise, the genetic own-root vigor or disease resistance of any cultivar is no better or worse than the average untested seedling. Vigorous cultivars therefore, typically also the easiest to clone, don’t have to be thwarted from their full growth by the lesser vigor of an average seedling.
Commercially much more stable in the long term, since cuttings can produce more income from the same amount of effort, and mound-layering stock plants (stools) become well-established as consistent producers.
Trees may be able to be sold smaller, and thus less expensively, to the retail consumer
Own-root trees are already suitable for mound layering propagation methods, saving a major amount of labor in the effort to pursue that potential
If the plant is prone to sucker and you’d like to share one with your friend, the sample you dig up will be of the same cultivar.
If you wish to be able to propagate a hard-to-root selection via mound layering methods, such as I use, having the cultivar on its own roots is essential.
Benefits of grafting:
A reliably easy, quick, & even mobile way to preserve & acquire a desired cultivar… given you have a potted up seedling or grown tree handy as rootstock
An efficient use of limited scion material with a smaller chance of cultivar loss, since this clonal method is based on a rootstock that is already established
Dwarf and slow growing variegated cultivars may grow more vigorously on the roots of an average seedling than they would have on their own, producing a larger tree sooner.
Commercially convenient for producing large quantities of mature rooted cultivars after the shortest start-up period (if you don’t count the time it takes to previously grow the rootstock, which can be ordered in).
Allows the unique option of catering to consumer desires: 3-in-one trees for cross pollination, multi-season fruiting, and multiple cultivar harvesting from the same space… dwarf sizes of a desired cultivar for smaller yards… established orchards can be top-dressed with new & better cultivars
Allows enjoyment of root-disease-prone cultivars that can remain perfectly healthy on disease-free rootstock… or alternatively, a wider range of adaptability if the rootstock was chosen for its hardiness, soil tolerances, and/or disease resistance. Just don’t assume that this is the case! Average seedling rootstock from the same species cannot claim this quality.
Popularity of this method allows for lots of support for learning propagation techniques while starting up
Drawbacks of own-root clonal propagation:
With cuttings there is greater chance of stock material loss (possibly much less efficient use of named cultivar stock), since the natural culling of the trees’ establishment years is happening on the named cultivar
The relative uncommonality of this method for trees means support for developing effective propagation techniques may be difficult to come by (my effort has taken years)
The size and vigor of a newly rooted cutting compared with a newly grafted scion is likely to look unfavorable for the cutting. Because: the grafted plant has roots that are 1-2 years older! This makes a grafted cultivar stable for selling much sooner.
Cloned roots may never develop the taproots that many seedlings have, which help anchor them into the ground, if this phase of growth is unique to the seedling stage. Though I expect a plant will create the roots it needs to be stable, in the conditions it is given, a seedling has to send a root down fast simply in order to establish itself against adverse conditions. A cutting (under controlled conditions) or layer (still attached to the parent as it roots) doesn’t typically have the same need. How deep the roots of either grow may prove to be an insignificant difference in the end.
It takes time and infrastructure to develop a reliable system that can be consistently successful
Own-root methods may not work for a spontaneous cutting you want to keep alive while far away from home, especially in the case of a more challenging cultivar or type.
Drawbacks of grafting:
There is zero chance of cultivar recovery if winter or other damage kills branches to at or below the graft level.
Grafting introduces a weak point in the trees’ structure that is more prone to breakage and disease than other parts of the tree, perhaps especially while young
When the vigor of a cultivar is much different than the vigor of the rootstock, unintended dwarfing effects and other size changes can occur
Unless a rootstock is a specific type having disease-resistant traits, or the cultivar itself is particularly disease prone, the average seedling rootstock cannot be counted on to offer genetically better than the cultivar already is.
Aside from the generalities of vigor characteristic of different classes of tree (such as slow-growing dwarfs vs vigorous red-leaf types, for instance), in lieu of a mass-produced and tested compatible clonal understock exhibiting desirable traits, there is no way to predict how any given understock is going to affect a cultivar’s ultimate size, growth rate, adaptability, or longevity. Though the differences may be minor, the same cultivar grafted onto different seedling rootstocks might grow to different mature sizes.
The potential for graft incompatibility exists, which may reduce the life of the tree if there is an issue
An unsightly graft scar is undesirable for bonsai use
Lots of time and/or preparation is required to transfer a cultivar from a grafted state onto its own roots for bonsai or layering propagation