Help with propagating bushes and root suckers

[petingoso]

Hello, so I've scouted for good plants to propagate and I seem to have found a juniper and a rosemary.
Attached are the places I'm considering air layering, do they seem alright?

On another note, I've found a lot of alright looking olives but the issue is they are all growing from an existing root of a bigger tree.
Supposedly I could air layer them, but I've read about cutting the original root and some finer roots and hiding that under the ground? Should be alright?

Thanks,
pet

 

[Shibui]

You can layer juniper and rosemary wherever you want to. Just be advised that what might look good does not always turn out so good when you get it into a pot.
Lack of taper in the trunk is the biggest problem when layering for bonsai. At least the juniper has taper thanks to a previous prune.
Junipers can sometimes bud on older wood but I've never seen rosemary do that so if the trunk is bare now it will always be bare on your rosemary layer.
If you think these would turn out OK then go ahead. Do it just for the experience. At worst you'll only be wasting a bit of time and some sphagnum. Personally, I would not bother with either of them.

Olives often sucker from the base of the trunk but I have not seen them sucker from roots. Maybe some pics could clarify?
Olives are easy to dig and transplant. You don't really even need much root. We've often managed to cut olives off just below ground level with a chainsaw and plant the trunk as a giant cutting and they still grow.
Feral olives down here almost always have a swollen base on the trunk which makes great bonsai trunk with great taper. Look for trees with some bends in the trunk or low branches so you can chop to make bends and even more taper. If there are many trunks growing from the same base, spare trunks can be chopped off or turned into jins (deadwood feature)

 

[petingoso]

You can layer juniper and rosemary wherever you want to. Just be advised that what might look good does not always turn out so good when you get it into a pot.
Lack of taper in the trunk is the biggest problem when layering for bonsai. At least the juniper has taper thanks to a previous prune.
Junipers can sometimes bud on older wood but I've never seen rosemary do that so if the trunk is bare now it will always be bare on your rosemary layer.
If you think these would turn out OK then go ahead. Do it just for the experience. At worst you'll only be wasting a bit of time and some sphagnum. Personally, I would not bother with either of them.

Olives often sucker from the base of the trunk but I have not seen them sucker from roots. Maybe some pics could clarify?
Olives are easy to dig and transplant. You don't really even need much root. We've often managed to cut olives off just below ground level with a chainsaw and plant the trunk as a giant cutting and they still grow.
Feral olives down here almost always have a swollen base on the trunk which makes great bonsai trunk with great taper. Look for trees with some bends in the trunk or low branches so you can chop to make bends and even more taper. If there are many trunks growing from the same base, spare trunks can be chopped off or turned into jins (deadwood feature)

Thanks for the helpful reply, I've bought some rooting hormone and I'm going to try the layering.

Here I'm sending some pictures, as you can see, either they are attached to the main trunk or in one,to the roots of another bigger one.

Maybe there is a way to make them grow in a way that makes it easier to collect them?

 

[Shibui]

One of those photos is not olive? It has compound leaves. Not sure what other species grow there.
The other 2 look like olive but those suckers are too skinny to be worth collecting. Olives thicken very slowly. If you take those it might take 20 years to grow them to a fat trunk bonsai. The trunk in the background of the final photo is the sort of olive I would usually take but maybe your brother wants to keep that one? Down here they grow as weeds so most farmers are happy to have someone take them away. If you can find a trunk with a low fork, that's even better because you have the option to chop and create better taper.

 

[petingoso]

One of those photos is not olive? It has compound leaves. Not sure what other species grow there.
The other 2 look like olive but those suckers are too skinny to be worth collecting. Olives thicken very slowly. If you take those it might take 20 years to grow them to a fat trunk bonsai. The trunk in the background of the final photo is the sort of olive I would usually take but maybe your brother wants to keep that one? Down here they grow as weeds so most farmers are happy to have someone take them away. If you can find a trunk with a low fork, that's even better because you have the option to chop and create better taper.

Oh there's no issue in taking it, we have a lot of them, we just use them for a bit of olive oil.
I just thought it was too big for bonsai?
I've been looking at pictures and indeed some are quite big...
Here's some better pictures
Thanks for being helpful

 

[Shibui]

There's no problem chopping an olive trunk shorter. It will respond with lots of new shoots all over the stump. Then, assuming it survives transplant, you grow new branches and trunk from some of those shoots.
Here's some photos of our club members collecting feral olives a few years ago.
Ian with his collecting tool - the chainsaw and a nice mid sized olive stump:

I prefer to take slightly smaller ones these days. The big ones are a bit too heavy for me now.


Some of the younger members still have more muscles than brains


Olives I collected on one of our club outings

Not most of the trees shown here have several trunks because they give us more options to prune for a better bonsai trunk shape.
You may also note that olive trunks are often swollen just under the soil which means a much fatter trunk than appears above soil level. Take a look at some of the trees in your area and see if that's the same for them. It may change how you look at them when you know they are likely to be bigger below.

 

[petingoso]

There's no problem chopping an olive trunk shorter. It will respond with lots of new shoots all over the stump. Then, assuming it survives transplant, you grow new branches and trunk from some of those shoots.
Here's some photos of our club members collecting feral olives a few years ago.
Ian with his collecting tool - the chainsaw and a nice mid sized olive stump:View attachment 547472

I prefer to take slightly smaller ones these days. The big ones are a bit too heavy for me now.
View attachment 547473View attachment 547474

Some of the younger members still have more muscles than brains
View attachment 547475View attachment 547476

Olives I collected on one of our club outings
View attachment 547471
Not most of the trees shown here have several trunks because they give us more options to prune for a better bonsai trunk shape.
You may also note that olive trunks are often swollen just under the soil which means a much fatter trunk than appears above soil level. Take a look at some of the trees in your area and see if that's the same for them. It may change how you look at them when you know they are likely to be bigger below.

Hmm so you cut it and then pot it and see if it survives and sprouts. That does also seem better to carry around.
I think we have a chainsaw and the first one j sent shouldn't be an issue, it just has the straight trunk.
I found this one I could try to cut a bit from and it has more ramifications but it's smaller
There's some other candidates but they are too big IMO, I'd feel bad and it seems like it'd be a lot more work.

As for what I'm potting it in, I think next month when I'm here again I might do it, but I went to the nearest farm shop and despite no pumice or akadama or anything of the sort I found this organic soil whose composition seemed fine. Is this okay until next spring?

 

[petingoso]

Also posting here, I realised I had an olive tree at home, it looks beat up, soil is dry and leaves seem sick, but if I repot it and fertilise, does this one seem like a good candidate?
Seems to have plenty of branches.
I won't do anything to it for now until I'm certain on what to do.

 

[Shibui]

I realised I had an olive tree at home, it looks beat up, soil is dry and leaves seem sick, but if I repot it and fertilise, does this one seem like a good candidate?
Seems to have plenty of branches.

Any tree is possible for bonsai. The real question is what you ant it to look like and how long that will take.
My experience is that olives grow very slow in pots so I would allow 10-20 years to develop a good olive bonsai from that stick. Not sure if it is a cutting or a seedling. Seedlings seem to develop that swollen base quicker than cuttings. Collecting self sown trees bypasses both of those problems.
Not sure why it is not healthy. Check for scale on the back of the leaves. Olives can tolerate dry but even they need a bit of water occasionally to grow well and stay healthy.
Olives also have a number of other pests and diseases. You'll need to find out what problems are present in your area to ID the problem and get a solution.

I found this one I could try to cut a bit from and it has more ramifications but it's smaller

That's almost certainly growing from a lump on the lignotuber of the larger tree. It could be a challenge to cut it off but if you can there's a good chance of it producing roots.

As for what I'm potting it in, I think next month when I'm here again I might do it, but I went to the nearest farm shop and despite no pumice or akadama or anything of the sort I found this organic soil whose composition seemed fine.

We don't have easy access to pumice or akadama here. I transplant olives into the same soil mix I use for all other bonsai. Any good, well aerated potting soil should be

 

[Shibui]

Is this okay until next spring?

assuming you mean the olive suckers? The longer you leave them the thicker they will get which is usually good. Olives can be collected all year round in my area and probably in Portugal too. We dig olives from Spring through to early Summer and also from late Summer through Autumn as temperatures start to cool. They seem to transplant best when the weather is a bit warmer.

 

[petingoso]

Alright I've just changed the soil on the urban one, it does seem to have a bit of swelling.
If I slowly up pot it and then cut back the roots it should be a lot faster no? I'm guessing I can do that year round unlike downpotting.
I'll leave it alone for now but I'm guessing next year/spring or so I'll be needing to start pruning and wiring it to grow how I want?

I'll see next month if I can collect a rootsucker or the bigger tree then and check how my airlayers are coming along

 

[Srt8madness]

There's no problem chopping an olive trunk shorter. It will respond with lots of new shoots all over the stump. Then, assuming it survives transplant, you grow new branches and trunk from some of those shoots.
Here's some photos of our club members collecting feral olives a few years ago.
Ian with his collecting tool - the chainsaw and a nice mid sized olive stump:View attachment 547472

I prefer to take slightly smaller ones these days. The big ones are a bit too heavy for me now.
View attachment 547473View attachment 547474

Some of the younger members still have more muscles than brains
View attachment 547475View attachment 547476

Olives I collected on one of our club outings
View attachment 547471
Not most of the trees shown here have several trunks because they give us more options to prune for a better bonsai trunk shape.
You may also note that olive trunks are often swollen just under the soil which means a much fatter trunk than appears above soil level. Take a look at some of the trees in your area and see if that's the same for them. It may change how you look at them when you know they are likely to be bigger below.

Looks like am American city maintenance crew, 1 person working, 4 people supervising

Great pics and some awesome material!

 

[Shibui]

Looks like am American city maintenance crew, 1 person working, 4 people supervising

Plenty of advice but not a lot of offers to help.