I put the air-layered Santa Rosa plum in the ground this evening. I pulled the big forsythia out this morning with a lot of rope and a big come-a-long, cut the root ball off with the chain saw, dragged off the brush, washed the dirt out the root ball and dragged it off, chopped out some more roots, hoed it up, raked it out, planted the plum.
It had lots of new roots filling up the pot and has been growing fast.
#gardening #SantaRosaPlum #PlumTree #plum #orchard #AirLayering #propagation
@levampyre Yes, I peeled the bark in a section, covered with moss, dirt, ash, and wet that. Wrapped it with plastic and used rubber splicing tape on each end to seal it good. I used a syringe to inject water into it every couple of weeks or more when it was hot. Maybe 20cc each time.
Here's the post when I cut it off, shows how it was wrapped up. There's many layers of plastic because I had a narrow roll of the stuff I used.
https://mastodon.social/@firephoto/114723358497712157
Original post.
@firephoto So would you say, it's worth the effort? Do your air layered cuttings have higher survival rates?
I've found that I find it quite complicated to keep the air layered bits moist for long enough to develop roots, esp. in the dry summer heat. It was way less effort to just take a larger number of small cuttings, stick them in a barrel full of soil in the shade and water them all together once a week. Or to grow them from seed in situ, which has the highest survival rate in my location.
Tom
levampyre