I recently came across some beautiful “Stem and Leaf” Satsuma Mandarins at the local produce market with some fairly fresh looking foliage still attached and it got me thinking about the possibilities of propagating some of my own from the cuttings. I’ve gone ahead and attempted to root two of the cuttings with a bit of rooting hormone although I’m not overly optimistic as most of the cuttings only had a couple nodes to work with . I also picked out the nicest stem with four good looking buds and cleft grafted it onto a 2 year old seed grown grapefruit as the rootstock. I guess only time will tell if the stems are still viable. My question though is regarding compatibility of Satsuma Mandarin on Grapefruit rootstock. Does anyone have any experience with this combination?
I tried to root some eight or so of these extremely small 'cuttings' some years ago and managed to root two of them, so they are indeed viable. Mine were much smaller than yours and many had only one small leaf on them. Watch for the presence of scale; though the stems and leaves looked clean there were apparently juveniles present which later developed into adults.
I just remembered that my cuttings were not satsuma but more likely to be clementines. Previous comments still apply nevertheless.
I've attempted to grow several Satsuma from cuttings. All the Satsuma cuttings ended up dying. But Changsha mandarin and Ichang papeda are very easy to root, all those cuttings survived. This was side by side next to the Satsuma cuttings, same conditions. I used rooting hormones too.
Unfortunately none of my satsuma cuttings or grafts took and similar results from someone else I know locally. I’ll have to give it a try again next year I suppose!
