Kits & Cuttings

Why OP-367? I started with almost 50 different clones and learned about many of them, their traits, size, parentage, dates, etc. grew them not knowing what each of them would do. As time went by I realized that the female trees would make unwanted trees. Those were the first ones I dropped from my list. I also dropped the small ones, and the ones that grew slowly or would not grow in Texas or Florida. I ended up with the OP-367. That was my choice for the best clone, and I began growing only that clone. It has been planted from Alaska to the Texas panhandle and everywhere in between where it performs well in all locations. There is another tree, the DN-34. It looks just like the OP-367 but you can not tell them apart unless they are 4 or 5 years old. The DN-34 is only 25 ft. wide as opposed to the OP-367 which is 40 ft. wide. That is their main difference.

I also needed a narrow hybrid poplar tree. I picked the Gazi which has a footprint of 6 ft. Numerous gazi poplars can be planted in a smaller area and produce the same amount of wood than other poplars with a more expansive branch pattern.

How early can you start them? That is another experiment which I performed several years ago: In November, I tilled a small plot and covered it with a 3’x 6′ of black plastic. I tucked the plastic edges into the ground . Then I dipped the lower end of the cuttings in Hormodin (rooting hormone) and pushed the op-367 cuttings thru the plastic sheet. These were cuttings that I had freshly taken from the trees. I planted them about 4″ apart and filled the area with 400 little cuttings.

I checked on the cuttings regularly often, and in January I started seeing cuttings laying on top of the plastic. I figured that it was squirrels or other rodents since I did not have a fence installed, This continued until I figured out what was happening. The constant freezing and thawing of the water moisture was forcing them them up and out. then I continued to push them down.

This was an experiment like I said, and I was not expecting many of them to survive. At the end of March I saw growth in some of the cuttings. That was a good sign. A month later I had 400 cuttings all leafing fast. Another month, and I had to start digging them out because they were crowding each other. End of story, it worked, every cutting grew. This proved that cuttings will survive Pennsylvania winters. By the way I am in zone 6A and temps may get as low as 2 degrees during the winter.

If you are growing your cuttings in the basement, You need to install a small fan set at low speed to keep the air moving through the tree cuttings to prevent the “Damping off” disease.

Besides poplars I also have the European Privet and the California privet. Those are the only 5 trees that I will be selling from now on. I still have all the others, but I will not have the cuttings unless you ask for them. Ask between December and before the end of March.