ShadyBonsai
Sapling
Hey guys, I picked up a blood good maple and am in the process of air layering the trunk to dispose of the graft and get some better roots. My plan currently is to air layer until the leaves fall off in autumn, pot it up for winter, and then do a hard prune in spring to start trunk development. It occurred to me after the fact that I shouldn’t waste the rest of the tree so I’m debating a few more air layers and am wondering your opinions.
First of all, the trunk has some good movement already above the air layer and the branch highlighted in blue is a decent spot to start a low branch or possibly a sacrifice branch depending on how the roots look. I plan to hard prune the trunk at the yellow line. Once spring hits, should I prune that blue branch back as well? Maybe not all the way to the trunk but possibly down to just a couple inches? What is suggested there?
Then onto the air layer possibilities. About midway up the trunk, at the dark purple line, there’s a pretty long branch that can go entirely. I’m thinking either just air layer at that mark and make another small starter tree, or i could layer some of the shoots at the end of that branch and start a clump style, or possibly a forest style.
Further up the tree at the light purple mark, I’m thinking it would be cool to air layer that branch and create a root connected tree clump.
I guess this might be overkill but I’m just trying to experiment and see what works and what doesn’t and don’t want a huge section of this tree to go to waste next spring. Is this too much air layering for this tree, and would it survive the winter? What do you guys think?
First of all, the trunk has some good movement already above the air layer and the branch highlighted in blue is a decent spot to start a low branch or possibly a sacrifice branch depending on how the roots look. I plan to hard prune the trunk at the yellow line. Once spring hits, should I prune that blue branch back as well? Maybe not all the way to the trunk but possibly down to just a couple inches? What is suggested there?
Then onto the air layer possibilities. About midway up the trunk, at the dark purple line, there’s a pretty long branch that can go entirely. I’m thinking either just air layer at that mark and make another small starter tree, or i could layer some of the shoots at the end of that branch and start a clump style, or possibly a forest style.
Further up the tree at the light purple mark, I’m thinking it would be cool to air layer that branch and create a root connected tree clump.
I guess this might be overkill but I’m just trying to experiment and see what works and what doesn’t and don’t want a huge section of this tree to go to waste next spring. Is this too much air layering for this tree, and would it survive the winter? What do you guys think?
I guess we will see what happens and if worst comes to worst I end up with a blood good planted in the yard somewhere. Maybe I’ll try to layer another spot on it and see how it all goes. 
Thanks for the tip!
. Let me know how yours goes!
