Air Layering

[Ryceman3]

Ground layering… kinda like air layers but the whole tree. Just as effective, definitely worth considering if you have mediocre material you want to improve.
This Chinese Elm was a no brainer, I’ll leave it for a bit longer and most likely look at separating when I get everything out to repot natives in a couple of weeks.

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[thoglette]

Ground layering… kinda like air layers but the whole tree. Just as effective, definitely worth considering if you have mediocre material you want to improve.

+1 for solving poor nebari!

[thoglette]

Decided just to throw it straight into a Bonsai pot to keep the root system sml straight off the bat and I’d like to see how this approach goes.

Round these parts (32 south) that's a recipe for a dead tree. It'll dry out in Feb/Mar and die.

[TimS]

Nice one Ryce, i have done a similar thing before with a nursery stock maple Murasaki Kiyohime on a long straight graft. It's still actually grafted because the clump started immediately at the graft union, i just layered directly below the graft union and got a nice spreading root base from it

Found a couple of photos of the murasaki i did. Really great way to fix poor roots and improve trunk lines

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[BirchMan]

I've been meaning to try some ground layering as it's a great way to shorten a tachiagari and make a tree more compelling.

Today I inspected the two layers on this Blaauw's juniper. While it's not good to open air layers up too regularly, when it's getting to the point where they are nearly ready I like to go in and see whether there's any major issues I need to rectify to get it over the line. These had been on either 8 or 12 weeks (can't remember which bonsai workshop I put them on).

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On the top one you can see it had bridged the gap on two sides. I think the hesitation to root on the upward facing side was due to the black pod getting too hot and the sphagnum too dry even under 50% shadecloth. I recut the gap and wet down the spag quite well before wrapping the pod in aluminium foil to reflect some sun. The bottom half is reasonably well rooted so just need a last push to support the foliage mass. I'll leave this til April or so.

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Similar situation on the lower air layer. This one is on a much more horizontal piece of growth and it looks like the bottom half of the pod has rooted up pretty well in line with the moisture content, but similarly, not enough to support the mass of foliage yet. Another waiting game but no rush.

[TimS]

Well the wind is now dealing with having its hands full of caution after i piffed it out the window and separated the main twin trunk layer of the Kotohime.

I was tempted to keep quiet about it until i knew if the layer would survive or not, but i guess this is as much an educational thread as it is anything else, so you can all learn with me whether i was too hasty in removing a layer this size. I have done dozens and dozens of finger thick layers over the years, but i was guided primarily by how incredibly well the previous finger thick layer of Kotohime has grown after separation. If it had struggled i would have definitely left this on much longer.

The bag had roots the whole way around, and some of them had secondary roots shooting from them so i figured what the hell. Plus the next week of weather is pretty cool, and i would also like to take advantage of the remaining active growing season before autumn as well to get it established in the pot pending it surviving being severed unceremoniously from the main tree.

I was unable to save the half dead stem with the natural shari just owing to how close the bag was sitting to the fork of the layer i removed and the half dead branch, but i was always prioritising this twin trunk layer over the interest of the shari single trunk.

I have a couple of shoots left on what remains of the original tree, tossing up if it's worth leaving them to grow to be more motherstock in the future, of if i remove them over time to sell to recoup some of the costs of this tree; especially if this layer does die.

I guess at the end of the day i'm completely comfortable doing my usual finger thickness type layers, and if i'm not pushing myself to try thicker layers and learn about what differences there are with thicker layers then i'm not really advancing myself. Still i'd love for it to survive becuase i've got $200 invested in the tree and probably another $50 of sphagnum moss as well in the 30cm pot it is in now



I took a photo before removing of the whole tree, but it was so blurry it could have passed as evidence of Nessie, so here is the tree when i purchased it. The layer i removed is hard to see but it's the section above the thick left stem on the left hand side of the photo. That left hand stem is the half dead one i couldn't save in separation.

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Not sure why i photograpped the side of the layer with the least roots for this post, but oh well, here it is just about 30 minutes ago when it was still on the tree

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And off she comes, you can see i had to cut below the shari branch to remove it as safely as possible

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Off comes the shari branch

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Into the 30cm nursery pot with enough sphagnum moss to make me wince

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What remains of the tree

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and finally here is not even the full scale of "Maple Madness" at my gaff currently, with potentially more on the way. With the time frames required to grow JM into quality trees i'm really heavily expanding my growing at the moment.

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[TimS]

Well i've separated the fifth and final airlayer from 2022, the thicker shishigashira a few nights back.

All layers of both kotohime and shishigashira have responded very well to separation so far *touch wood* and i've become very devil-may-care about separating layers quickly now.

Tossing up layering both of the two branches that split in the Y at the top come Spring, but plenty of time to decided that. This is planted very deep in the pot for stability, my plan is to use the lower thin branch just above pot height to add taper, but come repotting time i'll pull it out and see what the roots are doing and choose then how to proceed with it.

Here's to the 2023 season and hunting down some more interesting cultivars to trial. My plan is to get a war chest of material going and start a thread along the lines of Ryce's Pine Project thread but for Japanese Maple cultivars to advance my knowledge and skills with the dwarf cultivars.

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[BirchMan]

Well done Tim. Envious of you and your Melbourne weather slightly. You've got to be a bit of a master over here to play with JMs like that. I like the idea of a warchest though - I have a similar thing going with tridents, shimpaku, and I guess olive. A self-perpetuating 'practice' on a particular species.

[TimS]

Well done Tim. Envious of you and your Melbourne weather slightly. You've got to be a bit of a master over here to play with JMs like that. I like the idea of a warchest though - I have a similar thing going with tridents, shimpaku, and I guess olive. A self-perpetuating 'practice' on a particular species.

Thanks mate, good that some positive comes from living so near the coast I rarely get any decent autumn colour on my maples; trade off is air layers work well since beginning bonsai I’ve been obsessed with Japanese maple and though it took a while to accept I was never going to get the stunning autumn colours living where I do, I really could grow nothing but JM and be happy.

I admire those who can work shimpaku well given how bad I am at them, so I’ll keep an eye out on your trees.

I have one in the ground but it largely gets ignored other than every so often cutting the long straight bits back precisely because I don’t know what I’m doing with it. Might have to dig it in the next few years and see if I can learn a bit about them too

[SuperBonSaiyan]

Checked the Seigen layer today and it had roots galore.

Separated it, potted in open mix (pine, pumice, zeolite and scoria) with the moss intact.

TimS, if I were keeping it, I'd remove the scorched / damaged leaves, but let me know what you'd prefer.

First time layering a Seigen, put it on 29/11 so pretty much two months exactly to get this level of root growth.

On mobile so I'll just post a link to the album:
https://imgur.com/a/xcfn3JL

[TimS]

Checked the Seigen layer today and it had roots galore.

Separated it, potted in open mix (pine, pumice, zeolite and scoria) with the moss intact.

TimS, if I were keeping it, I'd remove the scorched / damaged leaves, but let me know what you'd prefer.

First time layering a Seigen, put it on 29/11 so pretty much two months exactly to get this level of root growth.

On mobile so I'll just post a link to the album:
https://imgur.com/a/xcfn3JL

Looks like strong healthy root growth mate, well done!

Don't worry about removing the scorched leaves, the tree will push new leaves when it's ready, best to let it just adjust to being separated from the tree for now i'd say.

[BirchMan]

It's a warm one in Perth so time to chill and try to document some of my layering efforts. I got into shimpaku air layering from watching the Bonsaiworx channel on Youtube.

Here's the mother plant:

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Open top air layers need a bit of vigilance in summer, particularly with a mix of perlite and coco peat as the mix:

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The crown was separated back in July, potted up, and in about November I decided it was strong enough to air layer off its own pre-wired top (layers of layers = infinite plants):

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Closeup of pre-wiring:

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This small air layer was separated mid December. It had only rooted sparingly on one side, and I took a senior club member's advice to pot it in pure sphagnum. Shibui's post earlier gives me a fair bit of confidence in its survival:

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Cheers.

I thought I saw some yellowing in the foliage of the shimp air layer in the blue pot above, so on the 2nd (5 days ago) I did the snip. It didn't have the most roots but I was buoyed by the Seiju seeming to kick on and thought there might be an issue upstairs.

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Thanks to keeping it in a tub in the relative cool, and probably Perth's high 20s of the last few days, there's still no sign of browning:

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[dicky_seamus]

Has anyone got any advice on dealing with fungal issues when air layering? I've done a bunch of Japanese maples in the past with a very high success rate, using 100% sphagnum moss. I checked this years batch and on about half (all on one plant) there is a lot of die off above the cut site and there is visible fungal growth. The cut site also appears to have stalled after forming a callous, there is minimal to no root growth.

I'm guessing I must have trapped too much moisture in the moss. Maybe I did too good of a job sealing the area in plastic?

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[SuperBonSaiyan]

Decided to check on my Mikawa Yatsabusa JM layers this evening. Wasn't expecting much as I'd heard this species didn't like to layer, but to my surprise, each one I opened revealed roots.

One of them had very orange roots, not sure why, but they all had (what looked like) a healthy amount of roots, sufficient to be separated.

One strange thing I noticed was that there was a very strong ammonia smell when I opened each bag. I did check, and it wasn't coming from me...

Technique I used for these was:
- 4 of them were treated with rooting gel + powder, sealed in plastic with zip ties, then wound tightly again with grafting tape.
- 1 of them (the one with the most roots - but also had the most room) was treated the same, only I used a pot wrapped loosely in plastic to prevent drying.

Pretty happy, I'll keep an eye on these over the next few weeks (and likely move into the garage on the 39-40 days we have coming up).

Any advice about repotting / root pruning in the coming spring will be appreciated (avoid this? do this only after 1-2-3 years?)

[TimS]

Fantastic job there Super, lots of new material there to experiment with and find what works for you

As far as repotting goes, unless the tree is visibly struggling, I repot out of the sphagnum the follow spring from separation and try to remove as much if not all sphagnum as possible. It’s great for developing new roots on a layer, but not something I want to grow in long term unless (as mentioned) the tree is in Ill health

Murasaki Kiyohime is a spreading habit, and tend to struggle as upright style trees with keeping vigour in the apex. Aim for a clump/ broom style or a cascade/ semi cascade with them would be my advice to you,

Not sure about the orange roots, but I’ve had shishigashira roots come out extremely thick and quite pink and it hasn’t seemed to be an issue