rooting citrus is a bit tricky. mold usually damage the root development of citrus cuttings. thus i use 100% perlite because it is sterile and the sucess rate increases. i use polythene bags to increase humidity instead of mists. i use the same technique with seedlings but i mix potting soil with perlite.
this year i tried to t bud to a cutting and tried to root it (i got this idea from this forum but i don't remember from who, thanks it worked i leave you with these pictures because its worth 1000 words).

http://img534.imageshack.us/g/img0705pp.jpg/[url]

Thank you for the great info and pics. Which citrus varieties did you successfully root? What diameter were the cuttings? Did you t-bud the cutting before it took root or after?

This season i rooted smith red cuttings which i ordered from ucr. They were a bit close to pencil thick. I t budded the cutting before rooting it. I t- budded the cutting at the tree then cut off the cutting then inseted it in the perlite medium. These are three weeks old now but i will wait until i could see roots coming out of the pot holes. Then i would gradually remove the polythne bags to get them used to the new dry envirnment.

Good luck trying it

Thanks very much, I will try this method later this year.

I've found trifoliate stock to generally be a lot more difficult and take a lot longer time to produce roots than fruiting citrus varieties. Flying Dragon hasn't been worth the attempt to root for me because I get very poor percentage of survivors and it takes months. Seeds work better for me for FD. Most of the trifoliate rootstock varieties I've tried rooting; C-35, Bitters C-22 and Carrizo, are all a bit difficult but not nearly as bad as FD.

Sour orange, meyer lemon and grapefruit all root within a few weeks with a pretty high percentage of vigorous takes. Mandarins are a little more difficult and slower. I think there's an argument to be made for cuttings over seedlings for stock that cooperates.

I agree with bada bing. Inserted bud would probably fail since there still wouldn't be any roots to support it. I've given a try to that grafting procedure with volkamer lemon and macrophylla cuttings, earlier, and they have had 100% success rate in rooting (semi-ripe to ripe cuttings) and nourishing the scion, at the same time.

Igor

Well... it should be an interesting science experiment then!

I t-budded a few varieties onto Flying Dragon root stock less than a week ago. I'll wait until another week to make sure the buds take and then try to root the cuttings.

I have rooted cuttings (without t-budding first) off of the same plant before in a mixture of half perlite and half bagged potting soil with pretty decent results, at least 3/4 of them rooted...

Should be interesting...

I have read that the ability to root cuttings of P. trifoliata depends entirely on the age of the parent plant. Young seedling cuttings root OK, cuttings from mature plants do not. Can anyone confirm this?
Perhaps it explains why I have had no success - my cuttings have always just stayed green but never rooted. And they were from mature plants - I wanted new flowering plants.

I've tried rooting trifoliate cuttings. Some worked OK and about half never rooted. This was before I had a bearing flying dragon tree.

Mike, there were posts on this site several years ago, about rooting P. trifoliata, and in what time frame it had to be done. A diligent search should recall the discussion. - Millet