Propagation success

I pruned my pomegranate during the winter. When I found myself with some long pieces of pruned  material I thought I'd stick a branch into the soil and see if it would take. It looked mostly like a dead stick poking out of the ground most of the summer, and I planted all sorts of other things around it. Squash, tomatoes, beans, and some weeds grew there too. It is in a spot I don't get around to very frequently, and today I noticed, beneath the cover of some squash leaves, the stick had sprouted leaves, about 8" high. This has been a good year for various of my propagation projects. The seedling peaches made good fruit, a fig I've nurtured from a cutting finally took off and is fruiting like mad, and it looks like even one of my olive cuttings might have survived. Seeing the pomegranate leaves today made me very happy.

The plant from which I cloned is about three or four years old and is finally fruiting. I will try propagating more of the plant when I prune again this winter. There is a time vs. money trade-off in the process. I have the time to increase my plants in this manner. If I didn't have the time I'd be spending about $25 each for almost any of those trees. More than those two factors, I like the challenge of propagating trees in this way.

Seedling Peaches

The large peach tree in the back yard has been in decline since before we moved here. I made a few years of mistakes in thinning and pruning the tree, causing it to lose a few limbs in the process. This year I thinned the fruit extensively and was able to get a good crop. We had a late rain in July, it rained all day and night, and the weight of the rain on a couple of branches was too much and there was more breakage. The tree still has several good, strong limbs though.
The peaches are delicious and I want to propagate the tree via grafting and have been growing rootstock for that purpose. I tried some bud grafting early this year. My grafting knife was brand new and extremely sharp. Fiddling with those tiny buds and trying to slice the exact shield shape off the rootstock ended up with me having two bloody thumbs and grafts that didn't take. I've decided to try cleft grafting in the next go 'round.
Meanwhile three of the peach seedling trees put on fruit this year. I've tried the fruit from each of them. One of them is completely sweet. One was a little bitter (I think the fruit might have been slightly under ripe) and one only had three fruits, two of which the birds devoured and the third fruit I picked when it had only just softened, and it was pretty tasty.
From the seedlings I'll have good peaches until I can teach myself to get a successful graft going from the old peach tree onto a seedling tree.

Seedling peach. Sweet fruit.