Airlayering - Some Advice Please

mojo

Hi folks,

About a month ago I finally managed to aquire some real 'bonsai time' (ie the wife and my 14month old daughter went to visit the mother-in-law for a couple of days....FREEDOM!) during this time I made my 1st attempts at airlayering some branches on some trees in my garden.

Questions as follows:

Birch: I've made some layers on a couple of the branches - but I notice that some of the leaves have turned/turning yellow. Is this normal or are they on the way out?
Is there something I should be doing? I've read in some books that you should water & keep the spagnum moist. Others seem to infer that watering was unecessary as the plastic would retain sufficient moisture....?

Hawthorn: I set up one airlayer on an 1 inch thick branch. After doing this I noticed that layering the tip of the branch off would also provide some nice raw material. Question is - can I layer twice on the same branch? or should I wait for the 1st one to succeed (fingers crossed!). So far this branch seems to be remaining healthy, and theres a reasoanble amount of foliage between the two possible layers. So I don't want to undermine the 1st.

I also guess I'm running out of time....before autumn?


Many thanks

mojo

Advertisement

Geodude

Hi, mojo.
I don't have direct experience with either birch or hawthorn, but here are some general answers to your questions:
1. leaves turning yellow: is this happening to only the branch that were air layered? If so, I would say this is on the way out.
2. watering: yes you should water to keep the spagnum moist.
3. layering in series: it's okay to do if the tree is healthy and growing well
4. starting layers now: probably not a good idea as it is kind of late in the growing season.

Good luck,

__________________
Paul

"Life will be sweet like a rhapsody
When I paint my materpiece"

BrianBay9

One note on air layering in series - you need to have sufficient foliage between the first and second layers. My understanding is that it's the sugars moving down from the leaves that find no roots to go to and stimulate new ones. The distal most airlayer will get sugar from the leaves at the tip of the branch. But that layer blocks transport from the tips down to the second (innermost) air layer. You need leaves between the two to stimulate roots at the innermost layer site.

Brian

__________________
There's a difference between taking your art seriously, and taking yourself too seriously.

mojo

Geodude

The yellowing is only occurring on the branches that I've layered ( not the main tree) and it's not on all of the sub-branches coming off of the main branch i'm layering. Does that make sense? It's only a partial yellowing on some leaves on some sub branches.

I think I'd better check see if it's drying out - or something.

If it's dying I'm not sure where I've gone wrong.

mojo