Air Layer - Pyracantha [1] & [2]

Way back last year in early spring I chose two spots in which to have my first goes at air layering. Both pieces were quite uninteresting, not much movement, taper, the bark wasn't even old looking. The only asset was the thick trunks. Reason I chose such poor material to work on was: A - I didn't have any better, and: B - It was more a practice of the technique than to produce the material.

At that time I had no sphagnum moss so, instead of using the conventional substrate, I used peat instead (peat is just broken down sphagnum moss anyway so I thought it wouldn't do any harm). I used an old kitchen knife -which was sterilized in a pot of boiling water to prevent fungal infections from harming the new roots- and made a ring (around 9cm thick for a 6cm trunk) and cut my way through the bark until reaching the sap layer -a hard light woody section) where I scraped away the thin layer of cambium to reveal a lighter white wood underneath. The ring was constantly the same thickness all the way around the trunk and made sure there were no bridges where the tree could heal the wound instead of produce roots.

I then placed a sandwich bag with an opening at both ends around the trunk and tied it in securely just below the incision. Filled the back up with my soaking peat until I couldn't see any signs of the cut -make sure you really pack your substrate in so there are no air bubbles- and tied it in at the top with another wire tourniquet. After securing it at both ends with a second piece of wire I wrapped the ball of peat and polythene in cling film until I could just about see the substrate. The cling film wrapping has a tendency to become highly addictive and caused me to go a bit over the top at one point.

Well, after many months of anticipation the time came in which I could unravel the polythene from my air layers. After checking there was sufficient roots under both layers I severed the bottom using a saw. After this I carefully removed the polythene from my air layers to discover a mass of plump, white roots. A good technique I've learnt to remove the soil/moss from the roots with minimum damage is to dunk the roots into a bucket of water. Sadly I forgot to take a picture of  Pyracantha Air Layer [1], but here's [2].

As you can see from photo I cut a bit too far down, that can be solved next re-pot (at least it's better than cutting too high). I will update with new pictures of each layer as they develop if they're interesting enough to show.

Prune - Chinese Elm [5]

After pondering over the design options for this tree over the last 6 months, I decided to go ahead with a hard prune to force more buds on the trunk. If you're stuck with design options for a tree, I find it helps to have a play around with it on paint: cutting down the trunk, drawing on new leaders, adding branches and foliage until you have a design you are happy with. You can then base your design work on this design. Here is my original virtual for this tree that drove me towards the removal of large straight section on the side of the trunk and helped me chose which apex to keep or not.

Front Virtual

Having this design in mind, I went ahead removing all the foliage on the large straight section on the side of the trunk, getting ready for it's removal in early summer. I decided to cut back hard on the branches that wouldn't be included in the final design to force buds that I could use in the future. Here is the before and after photos of the prune.

Front and Close up of Trunk - before prune

The chalk shows where and what I will be removing in early summer to ensure a clean heal.

Front - after hard prune

I then made a virt from the picture with all the leaves removed so I could get a clearer picture of what I will be aiming for. There are still two apexes left at the top as I am still deciding on which one to remove.

Front Virt

This will now be allowed a full seasons growth ready for wiring and pruning in autumn/winter.