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Air Layering
- Frequently Used Method of Propagation.
What Makes Air-Layering Work?
Traditional Advantages of Simple/Air-Layering.
Air-layering is a propagation technique and was in use in China over 4000 years ago, where it is still practised. It involves wounding the stem of a plant and enclosing it in moist compost and moss. Roots will then form from the cut area. When the roots are well developed the new plant is severed from the parent plant by cutting off just below the roots and potting it up separately.
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Frequently Used Method of Propagation.
It was frequently used during the distinguished era of the great French gardens in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Popularity decline with Industrial Revolution
The orthodox technique involved using cloth (possibly cotton, linen or lace) wrapped in bandage-like fashion around the compost and surrounding the wound. This is tricky set-up procedure and could take 40 to 60 mins to carry out and often involved two people. This was not considered a major problem, with the availability of cheap labour. Most of the big gardens were part of bigger estates owned by the aristocracy
The technique suffered a double blow. First, the big estates were broken up after the upheavels of the French Revolution. Second, the onset of the Industrial Revolution provided the killer blow to its popularity. The factories competed for labour and no-longer was it profitable to employ workers to propagate plants at the rate of one an hour. For the past two hundred years, air-layering was mainly carried out on expensive plants which were hard to propagate by seeds or cuttings e.g, Bonsai trees, Rhododendrons.
What Makes Air-Layering Work?
There are two main thoroughfares within a plant/tree:
- The Phloem tissue which is situated just under the bark. This acts as a conduit for the sugars created during photosynthesis, and various other photosynthates, to travel down from the leaves to the lower parts of the plant; the roots are nourished from this source.
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The Xylem tissue is much thicker and is separated from the Phloem tissue by the Cambrium layer. The Xylem transports water, nitrogen, phosphorus potassium, and other mineral nutrients (as well as sugars in the early spring) from the roots to the leafy portions of the tree.
The technique of air-layering removes/injures the Phloem layer and interrupts the flow of sugars and photosynthates to the roots. They are stopped at the wound in the Phloem layer and congregate there. This accumulation stimulates adventitious buds in the area of the wound to start growing, the presence of rooting hormone and moist compost encourage the buds to develop roots rather than leaves and therefore takes advantage of natures survival processes.
Traditional Advantages of Simple/Air-Layering.
- There is a minimum disturbance and no adverse effect to the mother plant.
- During propagation both mother plant and new plant develop.
- The new plant will have cloning characteristics of the mother plant.
- There is a very big success rate resulting in good size plants.
- Can save up to 4 years in bringing certain plants to the stage of transplanting directly to an orchard or garden.
- More rapid and stronger root growth reducing the period of propagation.
- Propagation can be done all year round in Ireland.
- The new plant tends to be stronger and more mature than those propagated by any other technique.
- Valuable space and time in attending to rooting trays, etc. is saved.
- Extra income can be earned from the sale of young rooted plants.
New Exciting Development in Ireland.
Worldwide, experts for over two hundred years have been trying to solve the problem of providing a commercial enclosure to hold moss around a stem with little success. However, in Ireland, after intermittent research and experimentation stretching back to 1989. A new product Comet has been developed, which greatly assists the process of air-layering. This patented product has been launched by Rootgrow Ltd, 87 Allen Park Road, Stillorgan Co. Dublin and is marketed under the tradename of Gyrosak. Gyrosak products, the major advantages:
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Labour saving: air-layering set-up reduced to 4-6 mins.
- Can be applied to a number of different thickness of stem.
- Is reusable and will not break easily.
- Click mechanism for easy closing.
- Used when propagation cycle needs to be shortened.
- Used instead of simple, french layering, stooling, cuttings.
- Can be used on both indoor and outdoor plants.
My product never fails to produce roots. The Air Layering system, which is known to be a very successful method, traditionally, has been used only on plants that are difficult to propagate by seeds or cuttings (these plants then, because of the application time involved, are expensive to buy e.g. rhododendrons).
Now, this very successful method of propagation can now be used on all woody plants, both indoors and outdoors. Horticulturists, gardeners no longer have to put up with the distressing failure rates associated with cuttings. How they retained their sense of humour, beats me!
Example: layered a rose end of April 1996.----cut it from parent rose at end of June 1996.-------planted it immediately on the far side of my garden.------There were roses from the transplant in August 1996. Exact clone of Parent plant.
You can find out more from my WEBSITE at address: http://indigo.ie/~gyrosak
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