Gday again folks!
As promised, here are a few pics of a Euc layer in progress. I believe that I started the process in November or December, and when I checked in early January, I found that much of the layer site had bridged-over with new cambium tissue, causing me to re-strip the wound.
The little pot has been wrapped in a plastic shopping bag to prevent evaporation, but I have obviously removed it for the purposes of photography.
[1] The layer in the context of the entire tree. The trunk is approximately 40mm (~1.5") at the layer site. I had chosen to perform a layer on this tree because the trunk needed shortening but I couldn't bear to simply throw away such a great source of thick, tapered Euc material.
[2] A detailed pic of the layer, showing how finely chopped the sphagnum moss is. I have found that if sphagnum is left in its original strands, it is likely to form air pockets which may hinder the development of roots. Also, using fine particles such as this make it much easier to tease out the roots when the time comes. (In actuality, this sphagnum was thrown into an old blender with generous portion of water, and whizzed until all the large strands were torn to shreds.)
[3] The underside of the layer, and lots of roots. I could probably safely remove the layer now (assuming that I trimmed the top quite heavily at the same time). However, it is difficult to tell whether I have achieved even rooting about the layer site, so I chose to trim these roots back to the drainage holes in the pot, in order to try to force new roots to emerge from the trunk. I have since re-wrapped the pot in a plastic bag, and will check periodically over the next month or so.
I dunno if any of this has helped, but I have managed to bump my own thread and add to my post-count...
Thanks.
Fly.