Cuttings 2006
Well, cuttings are done for another season. Each year I go through the ritual of cutting propagation. I have been doing this since about 1985 when I started out with a little propagation case with a mist system I designed myself. From the first rooted cuttings, I was hooked. That first batch was about four flats; that's all I could fit into the case. It wasn't long before I built a 20 by 25 foot propagation house with bottom heated tables timed mist and even high pressure fog at one point. The big house (still tiny by commercial standards) held 25,000 cuttings and I used to fill it two or three times a season, starting in June and ending in August. Thanks God I don't do that anymore. It's amazing how much energy you can expend when you are young and stupid.
I shut down the old house about six years ago. I just couldn't live in one county and drive to the other often enough to make sure the cuttings were ok, and the old house finally just wore out. So, I started doing cuttings over here at the new nursery, modestly at first, doing about twenty flats in a little 6 by 15 foot greenhouse. They had mist, but no active ventilation or heating. I would have to open and close the doors each day according to the weather. This made the air inside quite dry for cuttings despite the mist. It wasn't great, but it allowed me to continue to propagate enough to keep the nursery functioning until I could build another real propagation room.
The present prop house is a culmination of all I have learned over the twenty years that I have been doing this. It is small, tight, and very efficient. But best of all, it cost me about a third of what it would cost to build a traditional type greenhouse, even a steel hoop frame house. This one is 14 by 30 feet built with 1 1/4 inch Schedule 40 PVC hoops anchored with pipes driven into the ground and secured with a border of treated 2 x 4 lumber. It is an inflated double wall poly house, and even the ends are doubled walled. It is nearly airtight in winter when the shutters are closed over the vents.
Last year, I hadn't finished the ventilation, so I regulated the heat by opening and closing the doors. Again, dry air made regulation difficult, but the cuttings did well despite the fact it got up to 110F several times. This house has fog which runs along the ridge pipe, just visible in the photo. At first I had to turn this on and off each day manually; a hit or miss system at best. This fog system is not high pressure. I discovered that if you have line pressure of about 60psi, the high pressure fog nozzles still work even though it doesn't get as good atomization as you do at 300psi. But on the other hand, you don't have to install a separate high pressure pump which eats up electricity and makes one hell of a racket.
Little by little the nursery inches toward completion. This year I installed the evaporative cooler to the propagation house and automated the fogger to hold the moisture to at least at 60% relative humidity. This allows me to keep the doors shut and everything is self acutating. The cooler is set to 96F and the fogger is turned on by the humidistat. No more guesswork. The cuttings love it. This almost total control lets me leave more foliage and softer foliage than I ever have before. The increased foliage stimulates faster root production and the nearly total lack of transpiration makes the process almost stress free for the cuttings. The first cuttings were started over three weeks ago and not a single cutting has failed yet. Some of the flats of faster rooting species are nearly ready to come out of the house. Talk about a sauna bath! It's not a pleasant experience to have to go in there during the day to deposit cuttings. I have to take my glasses off before going in or I am blinded by the instant fog on them.
The old little greenhouse has been converted to a more traditional greenhouse role. It doesn't have mist any longer, but has a thermostatic fan, and fog regulated by the same humidistat as the propagation room. It also has electric wire bottom heated beds which make it a wonderful seed starting room. The plan is to use this little greenhouse as a halfway house for the cuttings after they have rooted. It is always best to get the cuttings off the mist as soon as possible to prevent rot. I've never had a climate controlled place for them to go before, so this is really exciting and should allow me to transition a number of delicate species such as Japanese white pines, Pinus parviflora. I stuck a few 'Zuisho' cutting this summer just to see how they would do in this new setup. It's too early to tell yet, but the cuttings still look good after almost two weeks. The problem with 'Zusiho' in the past hasn't been getting them to root, which has been pretty easy, but keeping them alive after they have rooted. They really resent being moved to 100+F temperatures and low humidity, and they rot if left under mist. This intermediate house may be just what they need.
Anyhow, it's very rewarding just to stare at those 6,000 cuttings; little lives about to begin, that with care and patience will make me and others very happy.
