Lou T
Mame
To begin, I took an airlayer off a Ficus religiosa today. I know, terrible time of year but I got bored. Also, it’s been a relatively mild winter here in NE Florida and the plant is still pushing growth.
The whole point of this experiment was to induce the accelerated formation of nebari by splitting the trunk at the airlayer, effectively forking the root mass. I was inspired by youtuber/bonsai artist “Bonsai Iligan” and this video:
Here is a photo of the airlayer once I removed the plastic and began painstakingly removing the spaghum moss with a pair of tweezers.
I lost about 60 percent of the roots doing this. Once I was happy with the removal of the moss and could see the base of the layer better, I created a fork using a pair of pruners.
From here I very carefully pulled the split apart and probably broke a bunch of stuff but whatever. I ended up with this:
I wedged a piece of lava rock between the fork to keep it separated. Then I planted in well-draining substrate and placed it in the shade. Might throw some plastic over it to limit transpiration some more. Here is a final image:
Things I would do differently:
1. Use a less fibrous yet still water retentive layering medium such as vermiculite so as to allow ease of cleaning up the root mass.
2. Make the layering vehicle looser around the site. For example, use a suspended pot. I found the roots to be compressed against the trunk and a bit too dense to work with.
What do you all think of this potentially murderous experiment? Will it live? And if it does how do you suspect the nebari will look like in a couple years?
The whole point of this experiment was to induce the accelerated formation of nebari by splitting the trunk at the airlayer, effectively forking the root mass. I was inspired by youtuber/bonsai artist “Bonsai Iligan” and this video:
Here is a photo of the airlayer once I removed the plastic and began painstakingly removing the spaghum moss with a pair of tweezers.
I lost about 60 percent of the roots doing this. Once I was happy with the removal of the moss and could see the base of the layer better, I created a fork using a pair of pruners.
From here I very carefully pulled the split apart and probably broke a bunch of stuff but whatever. I ended up with this:
I wedged a piece of lava rock between the fork to keep it separated. Then I planted in well-draining substrate and placed it in the shade. Might throw some plastic over it to limit transpiration some more. Here is a final image:
Things I would do differently:
1. Use a less fibrous yet still water retentive layering medium such as vermiculite so as to allow ease of cleaning up the root mass.
2. Make the layering vehicle looser around the site. For example, use a suspended pot. I found the roots to be compressed against the trunk and a bit too dense to work with.
What do you all think of this potentially murderous experiment? Will it live? And if it does how do you suspect the nebari will look like in a couple years?