Dried out Air Layer

thumblessprimate1

thumblessprimate1

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Folks, I have an air layer that got dried out. It's upsetting because I let it get dry and also because it was a nice 1 inch thick Japanese black pine air layer. Took about 8 months to get roots. For 3-4 days it didn't get watered and temps were low 70s to low 90s F. All the foliage is healthy as the roots of the mother plant have had enough moisture. I watered the air layer again as soon as I found out that I had inadvertantly turned off the automated watering system.

But let's pretend that the roots got dried, would you think it possible for roots to sprout again or would I have to scrap this and start over? I forgot to clarify that the air layer has not been separated from the mother tree.
 
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Thumbs,

I would keep it and see what happens. I think it should recover. Only issue would be winter survival. Can't tell where you are as I type this, so unless you think overwintering will be an issue, I would leave it to it's own devices and see what happens. If the roots die over winter, I would still tend towards refreshing the existing layer in the spring and see if it will push more roots next year. I had a zelkova that didn't throw roots, I removed all my wrapping and what not for the winter and then redid the airlayer attempt at the same point on the tree the next spring and it threw roots quickly. I suspect the same thing will happen here if all the roots fail.

Regards,
Martin
 
Not to worry, though you may not have enough roots to harvest the layer for another season. Eventually the lack of an auxin signal below the girdle/tourniquette will cause the tree to seal off the xylem (as it would if the layer was pruned). But, until then, the layering effort can be continued. As you know, the process is driven by photosyntate flow and auxin from the foliage, so there may not be much progress until next spring and thereafter.

I am puzzled by how you are doing this layer. The conventional way is with damp spagnum wrapped in plastic. Apparently you are not doing it this way, because sealed in plastic (polyethylene: e.g., a split zip lock bag, visqueen, Saran) the sphagnum will stay damp for a very long time.

Apparently you are using a pot, split to fit around the stem, filled with a bonsai medium since this will need to be watered almost daily. You could save yourself from having to worry about it by wrapping 'the works' in plastic - maybe tossing in a wad of damp sphagnum first.

Again, not to worry. Likely you've only cost yourself an additional season.
 
Thanks, Martin and Osoyoung.

Your words sound good to my ears. The method I use for air layer normally is with spaghnum moss kept in a pot. It's worked best for me as I could control the moisture better and I could get the moss tight and uniform around the wound best. Perhaps this has more to do with my clumsy hands not good with the moss and a plastic bag.

Things became challenging as I'm recovering from a broken foot. I couldn't go outside as often to check on my plants and water by hand according to the changes in weather.

Good thing is that there's still hope! I don't mind waiting another season.
 
Glad it worked out for you! Nice tree ya got there. Bunjin I suppose?

I was told pines cannot be airlayered when I first joined this forum, so I cannot believe you airlayer a 1 inch thick black pine. So from what I read on this thread, you used a wire tourniquette and a pot full of sphagnum? Does it work on other pine species? I want nothing more than to airlayer this one pine near my creek, but don't want to kill the tree due to a failed layer. I also see you used 100 perlite?

Joe
 
Thanks, Joe. It's not bunjin or any particular design at this stage. That long branch is really just a branch that left on to keep the trunk growing fatter. I used tourniquette method to create the wound as the pine grew and sphagnum moss as the medium for the roots to grow into. I failed to mention earlier on that after I noticed some good mature roots growing down and up the moss, I replaced the 4 inch pot with a larger container filled with a bonsai soil mix. I got the idea for airlayering Japanese black pines from George Muranaka's blog.

What I think I may have done differently is that I applied a tourniquet near a whorl of branches. I figured that this could help the tourniquet to do its thing faster and that I'll end up with a fatter trunk. Later, I removed some of the branches and just left the two you see now. I wanted to give it space for light to penetrate and keep growth closer to the trunk. I pruned one of the two remaining branches to grow some buds. I'll have to do a lot more of these to be sure if airlayering near the whorl as I did is the best route.

The soil now is not 100% perlite. I took it out of it's original container and plopped it into the larger colander and just filled it in with perlite. A lot of the original bonsai soil is still in the roots. Perlite is just something I have readily available.

As for airlayering other types of pines, I'm not sure. Some are more difficult. Just give it a try on whatever it is you are interested in and see. I think the younger branches might be easier. I hear that mugo naturally grow roots when their branches and growing into the ground, so those might be easy to airlayer.
 
Very nice!

I'd say you're developing quite the green thumb but..........

Hell yeah bro!

Nice little shohin down yonder.

I would like to hear from the Eric with the excellent blog post on them, and that SOB/SOT.....the Southern Gentleman......Adair.

What direction did you take this layer for? The shohin or a ______?

Really good work!

Sorce
 
Do tell us if it makes a difference around a whirl. Meanwhile, I may attempt to airlayer my pine and just in case it does help I will try to find a whirl as well.

Joe
 
Thanks, sorce. It looks like it might make a cute shohin in the future. I don't really know. Ones with more pine experience would know better me. I'm going to let this grow and save it for a local club meeting. Hopefully I could make it to one in the Summer.
 
thumblessprimate1 said:
Thanks, sorce. It looks like it might make a cute shohin in the future. I don't really know. Ones with more pine experience would know better me. I'm going to let this grow and save it for a local club meeting. Hopefully I could make it to one in the Summer.
Click to expand...

The summer of 2025!

I'm not certain, hence, it would be nice to hear from more piners!

But.

I figured it would be something like, letting it establish for a year or 2,
Then start removing buds and branches slowly off the long sacrifice end. By then you may get lil yonder to ramify/backbud which will definitely become a stunner one day!

Do take it slow though, your efforts so far and this things will to live are definitely worth treating it like Heinz Ketchup!

Sorce
 
Wait a minute.



Why risk endangering the trees health with trying to airlayer it, when you could simply graft root stock onto it? Would this not be a better, safer approach? Granted, the graft may fail, but you would still have a much higher success rate than airlayering.

Wondering if anyone else has experience with this idea? I am not very experienced with grafting, but I will still try to give this a shot come late march.


Why didn't I think of this earlier.
 
JoeR said:
Wait a minute.

Why risk endangering the trees health with trying to airlayer it, when you could simply graft root stock onto it? Would this not be a better, safer approach? Granted, the graft may fail, but you would still have a much higher success rate than airlayering.

Wondering if anyone else has experience with this idea? I am not very experienced with grafting, but I will still try to give this a shot come late march.


Why didn't I think of this earlier.
Click to expand...

I believe the effort here (other than academic interest), is to have another tree = propagation. If one already has a seedling, then one can instead snip off the scion and graft it to the seedling. This is what commercial growers do - black pine cultivars on generic thunbergii root stock, atlas cedar on deodar root stock, etc. Since we probably don't want to buy root stock by the hundreds, we hobbyists would need to grow our own from seed. But since we are doing bonsai, we likely won't care for the appearance of our amateurish graft and will wish we would have just tried to layer it and grow it on its own roots - or some such scenario.

On the other hand, what aspect of air layering a branch do you think puts the mother tree's health at risk? For the mother plant, isn't a layer equivalent to pruning?
 
A failed airlayer can damage the trunk above it, in my experience. My first airlayer ended up with the entire top Browning, not sure if it's dead though. I'd have to check.

The purpose of the graft would, essentially, be to turn young saplings (root stock) into the larger, more mature and interesting branch that you chose to airlayer. You would hopefully be able to propagate large diameter branches, maybe even ones with the old bark.

For something such as the branch the OP layered, it wouldn't really be worth it to graft roots on. However, on a larger, nicely aged branch with bark and movement it would.
 
Mother tree should be fine so long as she wasn't unhealthy or too stressed to begin with.

I airlayer for pleasure and for learning. One obvious thing about this method of propagation is that what I produced in about a year is better than what you get growing from seed in the same amount of time. At least I think it's better than what you get from seed.
 
Ahhh. I see. I think I understand you now. I've never heard rootstock used the way you used it, so I didn't understand. I'm not even sure if that's correct. But I think I understand what you're trying to say.

What you propose to do, grafting roots is something that I have been contemplating. I may try it this Spring on a larger pine.
 
Ha leave it to me to incorrectly use a term. I was under the assumption rootstock meant a sapling used for root grafting nebari or for when they graft JBP onto JWP. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Like I have said before, this forum and books are all I have to learn from so you could understand my confusion.

I am for sure going to try it. I think it would be a great accomplishment. I would really enjoy working with anyone who would be interested in trying this. I think I mostly have my procedure planned out.

Approach grafting would probably be the best option here. Thread grafting may also be an option, But I don't see many people doing it on pines, oddly.

If we did thread graft it like here, we'd likely have to cut most of the roots off one side of the sapling, drilling at a high angle to make a convincing root spread. It may take several grafts though. I think I could do two and make it work.

If we approach graft it, it would be a similar procedure. Two grafts, vertical and flush with the rest of the tree, cutting off one side of the roots.
 
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