Air Layer or Cutting??

[Hutch11]

Gday,

Hope everyone is coping with the heat and watering the little fellas... 43 degrees here in Melb today...

Anyway I have a large J. Maple (about 6 foot) that I have been keeping healthy as I want to try to attempt my first air layer. To cut a long story short as to why I am asking this question I'll just go ahead and ask it.

Apart from the obvious techniques used, when would you decide to do an air layer as opposed to a cutting??? As I said I am hoping to one day attempt to air layer the maple, however taking a cutting seems like a lot less trouble. I will eventually try both but what makes you choose one over the other??

Hope this makes sense!

[Jarrod]

Mainly the size of the material your trying to propagate. If you try to take a cutting that is too big it will dry out and probably fail. If you try to layer a price that is too small you are probably wasting your time. You can do a lot of small cuttings and have a percentage survive. If you try to layer the same amount you will be wasting materials.

Are you coming tomorrow night?

[FlyBri]

Gday Hutch!

Never done it before, but the inherited wisdom is that layering is the way to go. Tridents are supposed to take OK from cuttings, but from the info I've seen, A. palmatum does much better via layering.

Good luck!

Fly.

PS: I'm happy to be proved wrong in the name of furthering Bonsai culture.

[Hutch11]

Gday Jarrod, thanks for your reply.. I still cant get down there for the meets yet.. am organsing my work roster to suit.

[Hutch11]

Does ayone else have any thoughts?

[Jamie]

what makes me choose one over the other is success rate and size of what ya want, if you want a larger base then an airlayer would be the way to go, if it is just propagation for practice or lots of little ones, go the cuttings. depending on size.


jamie

[Petra]

I prefer Aerial layerings than cuttings because i can search the tree for a nice movement.
Now with my new method of layering, the layers take much faster than the original way.
Cuttings are slower to grow up, aerial layerings cut down a lot of years of growing out. If you want advanced trees go for aerial layerings. Yes ,you will have some failures, id advise to first try on something that wont be too dissapointing if it dies till you get the hang of it. Once you start you wont be able to stop. I have 50 or more diffrent trees on my farm and they all have about 5 layerings each. When the tree is starting to show signs of growing thats when i do my layerings, but it can be done any time of the year. Fruit trees ,summertime. Be warned, its soooo, addictive.

[sreeve]

Yep I agree, without any hesitation, air layering it the way to go as long as you are not talking about 1/4" diameter material.

[Mojo Moyogi]

Hutch, unless you have a propagating bed with misting or heating or both, A.palmatum from cuttings can be tricky. Go with the A/L.

Cheers
MM

[Chris H]

Hey Petra
Thats a lot of potential trees.
250 stock trees.
Hope your installing a watering system!

[aaron_tas]

all of my cutting attempts at acer palmatum have failed, air layering is definately the way to go... but you're running out of time this year, so get moving if you're commander keen

[kcpoole]

I have had much better success layering then cuttings on Most trees. Especially when you are talking larger material sizes.

Much more work in doing it, but much highersucess rate too

Ken