Dwarf Barbados cherry air layers and future chops!

[Baku1875]

Alright, thanks to BNut homies i identified this thing, and after dragging this tree out of the shady corner of my yard, it's time to seek out some of its potential.

Here

Air layer time

Canadian peat and perlite mix and some sphagnum on top


Two air layers ready to grow, might do another 2 or 3 more. I want to get as many trees out of this and take 80% off the top little by little.

 

[Baku1875]

Once I milk this tree for every possible air layer and cutting, I'm going deep on the chops. Looks like a nice tree can be developed from a chop around there

 

[BobbyLane]

Theres a guy in the UK that gets pretty good results using perlite and sphag moss in the layer mix.

 

[Baku1875]

Money in the bank! Booyah! (although they root super easily anyway, these will make cool trees since they already have some branch structure and girth)

Here's the tree-view
here
And the other bigger branch rooted as well, it will make a more interesting treeGonna give it another week to see if the roots fill the bag a bit more and I'm potting it! propagation season has me burning through pots

I'm air layering that branch that goes vertical off the first branch on the left, parallel to the trunk...another bonus tree lol

 

[Baku1875]

Very productive barbados cherry cloning this year (except the middle one, that is one of the airlayers from last year), these are my new trees from this season (cuttings collected in May, and late July)

Almost as easy to clone as tiger bark ficus, and the flowers keep on cycling back as long as they are healthy. I just put them in 100% perlite, on a heating pad with a lamp in my garage and misted them once a day.



Some much bigger cuttings that I rooted in May



I potted them only halfway deep to save on soil in case of failure, now it's time to pull them out carefully and backfill to full capacity

 

[Baku1875]

In the top row, the one in the middle with the clay pot is from last year. The ones to the side of that center one already got the 'all pumice' treatment a few weeks ago. I'm just going to use all my pumice on these to get them as healthy as possible and start working on taper and all that good stuff in a few weeks.

Another pair, the one on the left was a seedling that I rescued from the yard (it was growing in the shade for years probably) before my drain field got replaced a few months ago. Twiggy on the right is just another cutting. I experimented with more cocopeat on these. The left one has nice natural trunk movement, I'm looking forward to getting it to back bud next year.

 

[Baku1875]

Close up on the twisty one



A bit of reverse taper in the trunk there before the little branches on top, I can probably chop at an angle next year and keep one of the thin shoots up top to eliminate that bulge.