Does anyone know if I can use my willow tree for new starts? My brother's minister has Willows all around his church and he starts his own, but my brother said he thinks he uses some special formula to put in the water or something.. I would appreciate any feedback on this as I want to plant several more trees and doing this would save me a bundle!

You sure can!

I have started the cuttings many different ways, and all of them worked fine. I usually dip the end of the cutting in rooting hormone powder before potting it in soil, but I have just potted the cuttings up without the powder...also have put the cuttings in water first until they start growing roots then pot them up.

It's really hard to go wrong no matter you how you do it.
...I have broken willow branches off the tree before and just stuck them right down into the ground and they did fine.

and i have some of cindy's willow to prove it!

Wow!! Really?? That is fantastic! When is the best time of year to do this? I am sooo excited! I can have willows everywhere now without the expense!! We only have one at the moment and I absolutely love it!! Thanks for the heads up!!

From what I hear willows are some of the easiest rooting trees in the world. In Ohio (me too!) your best bet is to wait until spring and try to find some suckers but anything will likely work fine. Beware of extremely fast growth to fairly massive proportions. I've seen several willows lately that have gotten very big very quickly, so make sure you give them room to grow and don't plant them to close to the house. My great grandma has one in her backyard that wasn't there when they moved in in the early 1970's and is now probably 100-130 feet tall and 6-8 feet in diameter! So, it needs a lot of room to grow and root.

I also have some of Cindy's willows. I just stuck them in water when they arrived at my door and now have 3 trees!

Sorry to sound dumb, but what is a 'sucker'?

That doesn't sound dumb at all, we all have to learn sometime!

A sucker is typically an undesired offshoot from the main tree. You'll often find them near the ground (sometime it looks like they are growing directly out of the ground) but sometimes they are up on the trunk a bit and they look like a young misplaced branch that is just sucking onto the main tree. They'll also typically be smaller than an inch in diameter. You can look at just about any tree out in the world and see suckers everywhere, and now that you know what to look fo you'll see them everywhere.

Usually they are undesired due to strange growth locations and they'll mess up to look of your tree in the short term, but if you are inclined to start an entirely new tree they work great! Good luck!

Ahhh... ha ha ha.. the world is full of suckers! ROFL Imagine that!

Thanks for the explanation! I appreciate it!