I love rooting experiments so much that I'll often mail people cuttings as long as they promise to report back on their methods and success rate.  One of our favorite* readers, Brian Cooper, wanted to expand his hardy kiwi operation, so I sent him cuttings from all three of our plants, many of which grew roots as you can see.  Brian reported:

"My plan was to bury them vertically and once they poked out then add more compost to the base to allow rooting of the new growth.  Two rooted from the new growth but they also rooted from the hardwood, so it did work but it probably wasn't necessary.  A lot of the compost that was added settled down and the new growth was still above the compost.  I made the cuttings a bit shorter so they fit under my humidity dome and this left a lot of 2" pieces that I put a layer of compost over, and some of them rooted up as well.  I think if I was to do it over, I would just bury all the cuttings (4-6" pieces) horizontally under 1/2" to 1" of compost or dirt."

It turned out that 1 of 7 Male cuttings rooted, 6 of 10 Anna cuttings rooted (even though the cuttings had flower buds on them), and 9 of 12 Dumbarton Oak cuttings rooted.  So if you have a kiwi plant and want to make more, Brian's method looks like a pretty good bet!

* Okay, I know I shouldn't play favorites.  But I love readers who share their experiments and make thought-provoking comments!