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Air Layering question - How old will my new tree be?

Posts: 2

Location: Wills Point, Texas

posted 5 years ago

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Hello all! just registered to the site and WOW there's a lot of good information here.
So here's my question.
If I successfully air layer a branch from a 10-year-old pear tree, will my new tree think it's ten years old, and will start producing fruit next year? Could have used Apple, Peach, Plum, etc.

Thanks
~Jerry

Chris Kott

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Location: Marmora, Ontario

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posted 5 years ago

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That's a great question, but I think that there's more to determining when an organism is ready to reproduce than cellular age.

If you air-layer, the resultant rooted cutting will be the same cellular age as the donor branch, which may be a different cellular age than the root stock that it was grafted to, should it be grafted stock.

I think that if a tiny little cutting too small to support a flower, let alone an apple, decided it wanted to expend all that energy to fruit, it wouldn't be good for the rooted cutting, which should be working on its root zone and aboveground vegetative growth. So I would think about pinching off that bud, to that end.

But to answer your question, an air-layered rooted cutting, like any grafting, is a clone of that part of the organism from which that cutting was taken.

If the tree is the infrastructure that the fruit need to develop, what kind of result would you expect from seedlings a year after being cut? Fruit trees usually take at least three years before they begin growing in earnest after replanting. Where are the resources, the nutrients and water, and the food energy from the sun and its interaction with chlorophyll, that the plant will need to fruit, if there's no root zone or leaves to collect them?

So even if they did fruit on you within a year, it would probably kill them.

-CK

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Bryant RedHawk

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Location: Arkansas - Zone 7B/8A stoney, sandy loam soil pH 6.5

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posted 5 years ago

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hau Jerry and welcome to Permies, as Chris said, when you air layer a branch to make a new tree the age of the branch is where you start, Minus one year. So, if you have a three year old branch to air layer, the resulting new tree should be thought of as being two years old.

Redhawk

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Jerry Bell

Posts: 2

Location: Wills Point, Texas

posted 5 years ago

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Thanks for the information. It makes perfect sense.

I have a few fruit trees I want to experiment with this year. doing both air layering and grafting. It's been so warm here that my nectarine tree is in full bloom, so I am expecting to lose that its crop for the second year in a row.

50 miles east of Dallas Texas.

Bryant RedHawk

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We are almost on the same latitude Jerry.
If you can cover the blooming tree and perhaps find some independent heat source (I prefer the old Rail road smudge pots when I can find any for sale I grab them) to put under that cover (we use old bed sheets and older row cover material)
the tree will have a great chance of making it through a cold snap (like we are about to receive starting tomorrow) with blooms in good condition.
I just noticed that harbor freight has a little heater unit that uses propane in the 20 lb. tanks, those would probably do a good job for more than a single tree or for a single you should be able to regulate the amount of heat produced.

Redhawk

Chris Kott

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Location: Marmora, Ontario

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Although I don't know what temperature range this would be appropriate for, I know that I have read of some people, on this site, if I remember correctly, decorating their early-emergent or otherwise cold-intolerant fruit trees with old incandescent christmas tree lights. I wouldn't do this with damaged old incandescent christmas tree lights, for fear of making the tree very much hotter than it would prefer, but I was wondering to what temperature such an adaptation, with insulating cover as described, that would work to, or for how long.

-CK

Bryant RedHawk

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Location: Arkansas - Zone 7B/8A stoney, sandy loam soil pH 6.5

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The needed temp is simply above freezing, unless it is a tree that lives in the tropics, in which case you would need the temp up around the 70 mark.

I like that idea of using Christmas tree lights, they could even be hung on the tree with strings if you worry about burning the bark.

Redhawk

Thekla McDaniels

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Let's talk about it in terms of a few variables.

The age of the cutting: it might be last years' twig, so it would not be the age of the tree, in years since the seed germinated that gave rise to the tree, it would be a 1 year old twig.

Some fruits have a minimum age before they fruit, and in that, the cutting usually shares the parent tree's status. If the parent tree is fruiting, then the cutting will not need to attain that physical age before it fruits.

Then comes the other consideration mentioned above, that the rooted or grafted cutting will need to be large enough to support the ripening fruit, and it will need to have physiological capability to support the whole process. For the time when the rooted or grafting cutting is in the process of becoming, then the plant will dedicate itself to vegetative growth.

These variables are all interconnected, but they are also functioning independently, that's how I look at it.

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