Can you take cuttings from Elm?

[Woodworks]

Working on our farm hedgerows this week and sadly we are cutting out quite a lot of dead and dying ash. This is going to leave some gaps on the hedge. We have few small elms doing pretty well around the farm. Wondering if we can take cuttings from them to fill these gaps in a few years. Should add I have never done this sort of thing before. Normally just buy whips when we want to plant up the hedgerows. 

 

Thanks

[Paddy1000111]

If you have elm in the hedge it will fill the gaps naturally. One of my hedges is elm and it seeds everywhere, it grows out the grass and all sorts! Otherwise you can take elm cuttings and grow them. Take some cuttings, and put the cuttings straight in water so they don't dry out. Dip them in a bit of root powder and treat them like any other cutting, stick them in some potting soil and let them grow. You will probably only get around half of them propagate though as they're a little sensitive so cut double the amount you want. Don't over water them either as by adding a little less water the roots will grow harder to search for water

[Khriss]

And layer in some longer stems from the remaining Elm stools too, scar the stem with a knife and stake it under the soil with a peg. K

[MattyF]

If you have elm in the hedge it will fill the gaps naturally. One of my hedges is elm and it seeds everywhere, it grows out the grass and all sorts! Otherwise you can take elm cuttings and grow them. Take some cuttings, and put the cuttings straight in water so they don't dry out. Dip them in a bit of root powder and treat them like any other cutting, stick them in some potting soil and let them grow. You will probably only get around half of them propagate though as they're a little sensitive so cut double the amount you want. Don't over water them either as by adding a little less water the roots will grow harder to search for water

It won’t seed paddy numbers because the seeds are sterile , they only propagate from suckers off the parent tree and why genetically can all be probably traced to the same Roman trees from 2000 years ago.. also why Dutch elm disease was devastating as essentially theres no genetic deviation in there make up.. if you where to look at ash there would literally be millions of deviations and hopefully why some will be resilient to chalara.
But to answer the OPs question yes they will propagate from cuttings well.

[Paddy1000111]

24 minutes ago, MattyF said:

It won’t seed paddy numbers because the seeds are sterile , they only propagate from suckers off the parent tree and why genetically can all be probably traced to the same Roman trees from 2000 years ago.. also why Dutch elm disease was devastating as essentially theres no genetic deviation in there make up.. if you where to look at ash there would literally be millions of deviations and hopefully why some will be resilient to chalara.
But to answer the OPs question yes they will propagate from cuttings well.

Never really knew that! Just accepted that I had constant new elm growth up to about 10 foot from the hedge, digging in that area I knew they were suckers that popped up but I didn't realise the seeds were sterile! Every day is a school day... 👍

Edited January 19, 2021 by Paddy1000111

[Woodworks]

4 hours ago, Paddy1000111 said:

If you have elm in the hedge it will fill the gaps naturally. One of my hedges is elm and it seeds everywhere, it grows out the grass and all sorts! Otherwise you can take elm cuttings and grow them. Take some cuttings, and put the cuttings straight in water so they don't dry out. Dip them in a bit of root powder and treat them like any other cutting, stick them in some potting soil and let them grow. You will probably only get around half of them propagate though as they're a little sensitive so cut double the amount you want. Don't over water them either as by adding a little less water the roots will grow harder to search for water

Good to hear. The elms are only on one short section of Devon bank and we have 3km of bank in total so it will need some help to get around the farm. Never been very green fingered so can you point me to any guides on propagating? Thanks 

[Paddy1000111]

4 minutes ago, Woodworks said:

Good to hear. The elms are only on one short section of Devon bank and we have 3km of bank in total so it will need some help to get around the farm. Never been very green fingered so can you point me to any guides on propagating? Thanks 

Propagation: Root an Elm Tree Cutting | DoItYourself.com

WWW.DOITYOURSELF.COM

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Rooting a cutting from an elm tree is a delicate process which has about a 50% success rate, because of the sensitive...

 

That guide sums it up pretty well. Like I said, it's very easy! You will just have to spend a good amount of time potting it all up and putting them somewhere that's not bitterly cold. When I've done smaller cuttings before I've used a heated propagator but I'm not sure about height when using larger cuttings so a warm room would be best! IIRC the best time to cut them is around now anyway! 

[Paul in the woods]

48 minutes ago, Woodworks said:

Never been very green fingered so can you point me to any guides on propagating?

If you have any suckers from your existing elms they should be easier to transplant if you can get a bit of root on them.

[Billhook]

On 19/01/2021 at 15:35, MattyF said:

It won’t seed paddy numbers because the seeds are sterile , they only propagate from suckers off the parent tree and why genetically can all be probably traced to the same Roman trees from 2000 years ago.. also why Dutch elm disease was devastating as essentially theres no genetic deviation in there make up.. if you where to look at ash there would literally be millions of deviations and hopefully why some will be resilient to chalara.
But to answer the OPs question yes they will propagate from cuttings well.

Read this then had a google search and found this

growing elm from seed

ERAZ-CONFERENCE.COM

Started reading it and thought that there must be something wrong here.  Anyone know any more?

[Paddy1000111]

1 hour ago, Billhook said:

Read this then had a google search and found this

growing elm from seed

ERAZ-CONFERENCE.COM

Started reading it and thought that there must be something wrong here.  Anyone know any more?

I looked it up after MattyF said about it, It seems like English Elm specifically has evolved to be self sterile. By the looks of it that article talks about other species?