Schefflera Hard Prune and Sargent Crabapple Root Cuttings

Not sure if I've mentioned it, but since early November, I've had very low energy and have not been wanting to go water my trees, let alonge mess with them in any way. Since the change away from daylight savings, my days have been very short and all I want to do is curl up in my bed and sleep. Cold. So very cold! Yet it's not all that cold. Regardless, still have things I have to do, so on with it. 

I mentioned on my last quick blurb that my scheffleras were starting to get too long and needed to be hard pruned. And somewhere in my blog (10/30) I mentioned ordering 5 Sargent crabapple seedlings. Plus I leaf pruned my ficus and I now have a shit ton of cuttings that need to be taken care of as well. Again, damn the cold weather, damn the short day; things have to be done.

Sargent crabapple seedlings had been sitting on my front porch since arriving in early November - at least a month. Luckily, the guy who sent them, wrapped them in moist newspaper, then saran wrapped them, so they had plenty of moisture in the roots to see them through. When they first got here, the leaves still had some green. The leaves turn to gold, then dropped. Not right away, like the tree was stressed, all in good, natural rhythms. I made sure the leaf had good leaf buds and was properly dormant at this point. 

Being it was cold, I decided I was repotting trees INSIDE! I set up some newspaper to minimize the mess and brought in my cement mixer for the soil and grabbed a few one gallon and 4 inch nursery pots. 

I started off by cutting open the first bundled root ball. The soil inside was still moist, but not too moist. I think they would have easily survived another 2-3 weeks as they were. Encouraged, I cut open the other four. At this point, I decided to hard prune the crabapples. Not sure why I didn't do that BEFORE unwrapping the root ball. Regardsless, I ended up with quite a few hardwood cuttings. I set the cutting aside and moved on to potting up the crabapples. This is when I broke up the dirt around the root ball. And this is when I realized the root balls were a bit bigger than I thought. I trimmed back the roots, planted up the crab in a one gallon pot and did the same for the other four. I'm not sure if sargen crabapples will grow from root cuttings, but I planted up the cuttings in 4 inch pots. While I was at it, I figured I'd prune back my other crabapples as well. Took all the crab hardwood cuttings, bundled them up (all facing in same direction), planted them in dirt and tossed them outside. Look, it's cold outside, let the cold work for me. Now that I think of it, I should have buried that bundle. I'll be sure to do that later. 

I hard pruned the scheffleras, then potted up some of the cuttings. Don't know how I got the number 36 in my head, but decided that was the max number of schefflera cuttings I was going to pot up. A lot of the cuttings were in bad shape. The tops were hitting the grow lights, so they were distorted and a bit burnt. I picked out the best 36 cuttings and tossed the rest. Yes, there was a lot more. 

So that still leaves me with the ficus cuttings that need to be potted up. Plus I have to re-bury my crabapple hardwood cuttings for the winter. I may have mentioned this before, but worth repeating: winter slows down, but activity never completely stops. All for now.