Hybrid concrete/groundlayering of Chinese quince and K-hornbeam (place your bets!)

Will it work?

  • Both will fail

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • KH will work but CQ will fail

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    9

NaoTK

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Place your bets on the success or failure of these projects! I would especially appreciate feedback from folks who have specifically tried ground layering on Chinese quince or Korean hornbeam

I have this Chinese quince and Korean hornbeam, both with great trunk potential but hopeless roots. I decided to ground layer them, but the problem is I had limited vertical space to work with. So I decided to try a hybrid concrete technique like below. The idea is the concrete would prevent the short gap from being bridged.

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Chinese quince in progress
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KH in progress
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Getting the cambium out of the nooks and crannies was difficult
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Completed Chinese quince and KH. I backfillled with soil etc of course.
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MrWunderful

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Merrigiolli discusses this technique in Bonsai Maples. In his version, he doesnt remove the cambium- he just uses the concrete to choke the bottom and force new roots via tourniquet on ground grown stock.

Curious to see how your version does!
 

Ohmy222

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I don't know why it wouldn't work. Not certain the concrete provides any function though except to spread out the new roots. I thought the concrete was to act as a tourniquet which you did by removing the cambium. Guess you are just considering it insurance. I have never layered a quince but have layered a Korean Hornbeam. It layered fine but they did have weird stringy roots to took a while to fill out. My layer was probably 1.5-2" thick. I seem to recall Walter had a hornbeam (not sure what type) that was huge that he ground layered.
 

NaoTK

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I don't know why it wouldn't work. Not certain the concrete provides any function though except to spread out the new roots. I thought the concrete was to act as a tourniquet which you did by removing the cambium. Guess you are just considering it insurance. I have never layered a quince but have layered a Korean Hornbeam. It layered fine but they did have weird stringy roots to took a while to fill out. My layer was probably 1.5-2" thick. I seem to recall Walter had a hornbeam (not sure what type) that was huge that he ground layered.
Yes insurance, but also because I don't want to wait a year or more for the trunk to expand enough to girdle. Thanks for your input on the hornbeam. I was worried because they are very poor for cuttings.
 

NaoTK

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I did my first repot of the year- this Chinese quince. The ground layering worked really really well! I recommend this technique for Chinese quince. It took about a month to callous and get going which made me nervous, but then it took off.

If anyone has tried thread grafting on Chinese quince please let me know.

There is a layer of concrete in the middle and a thick spongey perfect new root base on top of it:
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Removing the old roots. All the visible fine roots are from the ground layer in April 2021
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Later this year I will air layer off this section and build one of the remaining leaders as the new leader
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combing out the roots. Ordinarily I would cut these roots back but this year I will keep it all since I just cut off half the root system
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I'm keeping it in a shallow box to retain the shallow roots.
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NaoTK

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Curious how you got the concrete off? Hammer??
The concrete was pretty crumbly, I just tapped it with a rock from below and it cracked in large pieces .

Woahh! Rad.

Did you get this from Dennis?
I got this from Steve W. He had it in the ground for 10+ years or something which is why the roots sucked.
 

ABCarve

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I did my first repot of the year- this Chinese quince. The ground layering worked really really well! I recommend this technique for Chinese quince. It took about a month to callous and get going which made me nervous, but then it took off.

If anyone has tried thread grafting on Chinese quince please let me know.

There is a layer of concrete in the middle and a thick spongey perfect new root base on top of it:
View attachment 416368

Removing the old roots. All the visible fine roots are from the ground layer in April 2021
View attachment 416369
View attachment 416370

Later this year I will air layer off this section and build one of the remaining leaders as the new leader
View attachment 416371

combing out the roots. Ordinarily I would cut these roots back but this year I will keep it all since I just cut off half the root system
View attachment 416372

I'm keeping it in a shallow box to retain the shallow roots.
View attachment 416373
Great technique!! I’m going try this on my witch hazel this spring.
 

NaoTK

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This technique worked really well on the korean hornbeam as well... The new root base is 1000% better than the mess it had before. I will likely thread graft a new apex and chop this one down

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namnhi

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My take on this is that both Chinese Quince and Korean Hornbeam will airlayer readily? I have a few Chinese Quince that I will try to root from cuttings but will also try airlayer on a few.
Thanks for posting.
 

SeanS

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I’m doing the same thing to a 5 trunk trident clump. I added the cement a couple of months ago and allowed the trunks to start to fuse. Recently I girdled the trunks and they’ve started to root. I checked on them again this past weekend and the roots have reached the end of the concrete and started to go down into the pot. Hopefully I’ll have enough roots to separate the layer and get it into a bonsai pot next spring

Pics are screenshots from a video I took 10 days ago.

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