Air Layering Recovery

dank'd

dank'd

Well-Known Member
i had read as much as i could before trying air layering and never heard of plants contorting the way mine did within two hours of application

it looked at first like the droop would not stop and it was a sort of terminal wilting, but luckily the leaves stayed turgid and slowly over two to three days they have righted, one is now even praying

i'll post a picture on how they go. also i accidentally snapped off the top half of the plant seen in the middle foreground as this is my first attempt and the stems on these plants are still mostly soft. the top is in the bottom right corner of the picture in water

also, i ordered months ago from 'the cutting globe' company in ireland to get these air layering pods, but after two months and no word i ordered some balls from aliexpress and used a spherical grinding stone on a dremel to make holes

will be fun to eventually do a few experiments of scraping the bark vs no scraping, rooting gel vs none etc

2022-01-11_air_layer_recovery.JPG
 
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dank'd

dank'd

Well-Known Member
13 days later and thank heavens there is a healthy root. this is such a relief i couldn't figure cloning out and with this don't need a cloning space either

i have since air layered all 7 plants and all reacted the same way with a recoil of the tops within the first few hours, then corrected and even prayed in some cases. the one plant that is single to a pot which i believe is male (joti afghani), after recovering it extended/grew all petioles of the fan leaves out and up, surpassing the top of the plant it looks strange but super healthy (pic maybe later)

interesting that the plant that i broke in my first attempt and had to put in water has just begun to sprout roots also. it is a relative breed to the first one to show roots though (master kush skunk and critical skunk)

2022-01-22_first_root.JPG
 
Boatguy

Boatguy

Well-Known Member
dank'd said:
will be fun to eventually do a few experiments of scraping the bark vs no scraping, rooting gel vs none etc
Click to expand...
I think the removal of bark, skin or whatever you want to call it is needed. Otherwise the plant will just heal rather than grow roots.
I have only ever tried it on Japanese maples so it may be different with marijuana.
 
dank'd

dank'd

Well-Known Member
all i do is a spotty scraping of the skin just enough to remove a tiny bit of green paste, a bit of rootech gel and some old soil, which i now know to overfill the pods with at first then wet with a spray bottle, no compacting, then clamp on to plant

when i first tried the stems were still mostly soft and even scraping a tiny bit of the stem would make it visibly thinner and the top less stable. now they are very hard and i guess perfect for this method. will see how the others go
 
Star Dog

Star Dog

Well-Known Member
Just a scrape works fine you don't need to remove it, if you want instead of cutting/scraping you can use a piece of tie wire below the site twisted tightly enough to restrict/limit the flow up the stem.
 
dank'd

dank'd

Well-Known Member
thanks for the pics. there is a thread either here or on another forum about a cloning method where the op put gobs of cloning gel on the branches at the nodes without scraping, then in a few days nubs would appear, then they would remove and clone the traditional way
 
dank'd

dank'd

Well-Known Member
the male i was going to do some air layering experiments on but the picture is just to show how the petioles elongated noticeably after i did the air layer a few days ago

i will cut the air layered females and put them in the flower tent when they are ready. nice thing is they are the size of full grown plants with hard wood stems. no wasted space cloning small cuttings that would then take another few weeks to get this size
 
calvin.m16

calvin.m16

Well-Known Member
dank'd said:
the male i was going to do some air layering experiments on but the picture is just to show how the petioles elongated noticeably after i did the air layer a few days ago

i will cut the air layered females and put them in the flower tent when they are ready. nice thing is they are the size of full grown plants with hard wood stems. no wasted space cloning small cuttings that would then take another few weeks to get this size
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Awesome, I'm sure doing it that way does increase the success of the larger woodier cuttings or soon to be cuttings. :bigjoint:

Learn something new every day.
 
dank'd

dank'd

Well-Known Member
Kassiopeija said:
fascinating. the longer petioles may potentially even promote more early shoot development if the mainstem is less shady
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i kind of always believed this also, and i think the same thing is happening when leaves pray in early flower. in those first few weeks of flower the roots are also in a second growth spurt which coincides with the stretching. something going on with those systems of the plant that those sets of responses happen er something
 
Star Dog

Star Dog

Well-Known Member
I've never seen any changes through air layering what I'm seeing looks pheno related, the plant hadn't branched at all I'm not surprised they're growing.
 
Kassiopeija

Kassiopeija

Well-Known Member
dank'd said:
i kind of always believed this also, and i think the same thing is happening when leaves pray in early flower.
Click to expand...
well in early flower/stretch the plant may experience greater internal pressure from cell elongation coming from the increased growth.
when I ground-layered these mainstem plants I could observe that, once new roots shoot they'd pray, and grow vigorously, in that stage. As a matter of fact I used this sign as a mark to remove earth or hydroton to check on new root growth and these were always there.... the praying I've attributed to the increased osmotic root pressure - as there is a balance of roots & leaves, that kind of gets distorted in favour of roots, when I buried half the young plant in soil.
can be seen in revegging as well, if not too much rootcut is done....

but I'm not sure if that's the case here. the formation of new root meristem cells from differentiated shoot axis cells requires a hormone change that could have also local side-effects in a plant, that may traverse a few centimeters along its veins through the sap. conventional rooting usually sees it happening at 1 end with much removal of leaves nearby... what you're doing here is doing it close-by/ amidst many nodes where the meristems are also located.
 
Boatguy

Boatguy

Well-Known Member
Kassiopeija said:
well in early flower/stretch the plant may experience greater internal pressure from cell elongation coming from the increased growth.
when I ground-layered these mainstem plants I could observe that, once new roots shoot they'd pray, and grow vigorously, in that stage. As a matter of fact I used this sign as a mark to remove earth or hydroton to check on new root growth and these were always there.... the praying I've attributed to the increased osmotic root pressure - as there is a balance of roots & leaves, that kind of gets distorted in favour of roots, when I buried half the young plant in soil.
can be seen in revegging as well, if not too much rootcut is done....

but I'm not sure if that's the case here. the formation of new root meristem cells from differentiated shoot axis cells requires a hormone change that could have also local side-effects in a plant, that may traverse a few centimeters along its veins through the sap. conventional rooting usually sees it happening at 1 end with much removal of leaves nearby... what you're doing here is doing it close-by/ amidst many nodes where the meristems are also located.
Click to expand...
Are you saying bark removal is necessary or not to air layer?
 
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