salix

I've never started one this late in the season, but I just got a wild hair and decided I'd try to pull a fast one on Mother Nature to see if I could get some good root growth. I'm probably still at least a month away from cold weather (it was in the 70's here yesterday), and even then, it won't get too cold, so I'm hoping I caught it at a time of rapid pre-dormancy root growth as the water table comes back up.

The tree I took my cuttings from is half dead, and is surrounded by a 6-foot-high sea of blackberry cane. I climbed up an entension ladder leaned against a pretty dubious branch to (barely) reach the living sections of the tree. I was probably about 10 feet up, dangling over brambles higher than my head. I had to reach out to a branch that was way out of my 'power zone,' and the cutters wouldn't make it through the branch. I finally just reached out and gave it a little tug, and it broke right off well below where I was trying to cut (figures, huh?). I didn't even end up using that branch, and took some thinner, but nicer-looking cuttings.