Rooting Whole Japanese Maple Branches

eplov90

Yamadori
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After reading @Roadrunner's post in the Aeroponic Propagation of JMs thread where he shared Mark Moreland's approach to create shohin trees by rooting whole sections of trees, I decided to try my hand. I didn't have all the right pieces available so I made do with what I had and seem to have been successful. I tried it on the old apex of a Japanese Maple that I had to cut off anyways to make room for a new leader and next year, will likely try it on nicer material.

Step 1 was preparing the bottle, cutting it in half and creating the holes to let the water in the reservoir below keep the soil most. The top was inverted, filled with regular bonsai soil(Kaizen mix) and inserted into the bottom of the bottle after that had been filled with water.
IMG_0089.jpeg

I then cut off the top of the JM, trimmed it back but still left a number of leaves.

IMG_0091.jpeg

Then, inserted the JM section into the soil and placed the whole contraption into a clear plastic, zip-loc bag.

IMG_0092.jpeg

The bag was sealed and left in a shady part of the garden with a check a few weeks in that showed no roots but healthy leaves. I put it back and left it there and just today, exactly two months after the start of the experiment, I noticed a root made its way all the way down to the holes over the water!

IMG_0469.jpegIMG_0468.jpeg

My plan is to leave it for now and towards the end of August start to expose it progressively to more air/less humidity, before potting it up in September. @RoadManDenDron how have you handled the transition to a pot?

Next year I will probably try the approach in a propagator dome instead of the bag and also try applying rooting hormone to the stem before putting it in the soil.
 
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how have you handled the transition to a pot?

Well done on getting this far!

When roots come out the holes I cut them off, with just one root like this that can be done from outside but more roots I cut the outside, remove the rootball from the bottle and trim and then replace in bottle and full humidity for a couple weeks.

Now as far as potting on goes.

When you ease out of the humidity dome/bag, you will notice if the tree is ready to handle it pretty quickly!

You can see wilting in around half an hour, if it wilts or looks like it's about to wilt put it back into the bag,

If no wilt keep it out at this stage you may choose to pot it on, maybe wait til spring to pot it on (as some cuttings prove more successful following a winter dormancy) or option 3...

... due to difficulties keeping up with watering such small trees in tiny pots, some people are preferring to keep the trees in these bottle contraptions,

When it comes time to show they are put into small pots and displayed, and after the show back into the bottles!


The only other note I have for future is that you added water straight to the bottom section, I don't add any water directly, but water the soil and top of the bottle and it drips into the lower bottle, no biggy tho right!
 
Well done! Mighty fine that you demonstrated the process with words and photos. I'll have to give this method a try. It seems a whole lot better than me just stabbing the stem into some potting soil.
 
@Tieball the method is being spread round the UK by Mark moreland who is like the chair of the UK bonsai association

It's amazing the thickness of cuttings he has managed to root this way.

Show ready mame and shohin within 3 years! In fact all the small trees he shows now were from cuttings taken this way, and when the show is over they go back in their bottles it's amazing
 
@Tieball the method is being spread round the UK by Mark moreland who is like the chair of the UK bonsai association

It's amazing the thickness of cuttings he has managed to root this way.

Show ready mame and shohin within 3 years! In fact all the small trees he shows now were from cuttings taken this way, and when the show is over they go back in their bottles it's amazing.
I appreciate the visual pictorial process here that @eplov90 posted. I like that it uses simple ingredients with easily obtained common materials.
 
@RoadManDenDron. Do you water yours regularly?

When in the humidity, you use a bag I use a makeshift propagator, they hardly ever need watering but I check regularly incase they need watering or if there is any fungal problems

Once out they still need watering much less than I expected due to the bottom water but I change the water out at least weekly

The idea is to have a tight fit between the half's of the bottle so for the bottom water to escape it needs to pass back into the rootzone
 
@Tieball the method is being spread round the UK by Mark moreland who is like the chair of the UK bonsai association

It's amazing the thickness of cuttings he has managed to root this way.

Show ready mame and shohin within 3 years! In fact all the small trees he shows now were from cuttings taken this way, and when the show is over they go back in their bottles it's amazing
So is does he resemble the chair of UK Bonsai association or is that who he really is?!! LOL
 
Revisiting this thread to share how the branch has progressed -- I have to say, I am super impressed with this technique and will definitely be reusing it many times in the future.

After the last post, mid-August, I started opening the plastic bag around the bottle/pot over the course of a week or so and then finally just removed it completely by the end of August. I treated it like any other trees from there on out in terms of watering, even though it still had the reservoir below. I just needed to make sure I didn't let that area overfill.
IMG_0872.jpeg
The roots seemed to progress really well from what I could see from outside the bottle, so I decided to take it out, and take a look at the roots before potting it up. I was pleasantly surprised to see the roots all come out on the same plane and were fairly radial with 2 gaps. I exposed the cambium in those areas, applied rooting hormone and then potted it all up in the same type of soil I had used in the bottle and put the tree back where it was in the garden.
IMG_0873.jpegIMG_0874.jpeg
Thanks again for sharing @RoadManDenDron , this might be one of the best kept secrets in the propagation world. Next year we'll see how well it goes with JM cultivars and Tridents.
 
After reading @Roadrunner's post in the Aeroponic Propagation of JMs thread where he shared Mark Moreland's approach to create shohin trees by rooting whole sections of trees, I decided to try my hand. I didn't have all the right pieces available so I made do with what I had and seem to have been successful. I tried it on the old apex of a Japanese Maple that I had to cut off anyways to make room for a new leader and next year, will likely try it on nicer material.

Step 1 was preparing the bottle, cutting it in half and creating the holes to let the water in the reservoir below keep the soil most. The top was inverted, filled with regular bonsai soil(Kaizen mix) and inserted into the bottom of the bottle after that had been filled with water.
View attachment 562298

I then cut off the top of the JM, trimmed it back but still left a number of leaves.

View attachment 562299

Then, inserted the JM section into the soil and placed the whole contraption into a clear plastic, zip-loc bag.

View attachment 562300

The bag was sealed and left in a shady part of the garden with a check a few weeks in that showed no roots but healthy leaves. I put it back and left it there and just today, exactly two months after the start of the experiment, I noticed a root made its way all the way down to the holes over the water!

View attachment 562301View attachment 562302

My plan is to leave it for now and towards the end of August start to expose it progressively to more air/less humidity, before potting it up in September. @RoadManDenDron how have you handled the transition to a pot?

Next year I will probably try the approach in a propagator dome instead of the bag and also try applying rooting hormone to the stem before putting it in the soil.
"placed the whole contraption into a clear plastic, zip-loc bag.". Covering the whole plant leaves and all or just bottle portion?
 
@Tieball the method is being spread round the UK by Mark moreland who is like the chair of the UK bonsai association

It's amazing the thickness of cuttings he has managed to root this way.

Show ready mame and shohin within 3 years! In fact all the small trees he shows now were from cuttings taken this way, and when the show is over they go back in their bottles it's amazing
What is the largest cutting size they have been able to achieve with this method?
 
20241006_162817.jpg20241006_162754.jpg20241006_162752.jpg

I was with Mark this weekend, here are some pics of his cuttings,

I'm sure even thicker cuttings are possible

Apologies for the pics not being the best quality, we were packing away when I thought to take pics for you guys!
 
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