North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

Years ago there was product sold that looked like very heavy black rubber tape with grains of coarse sand on the outside.  You were supposed to remove a ring of bark from a shoot and wrap the girdled area with the tape.  After a few months there was a large callus under the tape and you cut off the shoot just below that and planted it.  The callus would produce roots very quickly and grow.  I had some and used it on a number of plants, some of which are still growing here after nearly 40 years.  However, none of what I used the tape on was especially hard to root from cuttings, so I don't know if it was really effective or not.
The actual method you are describing sounds like a modification of air layering.  Air layering was a method used before grafting was common to reproduce favorite apple and pear trees, and it certainly would work on quince.  In those times a clay pot was used.  A shoot was fed through the drainage hole and cut or partly girdled, then the pot was filled with soil.  The wound made callus and rooted more readily so that by the end of the season the shoot was rooted and could be cut loose as a small potted tree.
-Lon Rombough
Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, The Grape Grower, at http://www.bunchgrapes.com  Winner of the Garden Writers Association "Best Talent in Writing" award for 2003. 
For even more grape lessons, go to  http://www.grapeschool.com
For growing supplies and more;  http://www.grapegrowersolutions.com

On Feb 1, 2007, at 6:58 AM, rmelrose@danvilleVT.net wrote:

I have a `have you ever tried' question. Somewhere, unfortunately I do not
remember where, I read about a modified layering technique. Basically the
claim was that if one wraps a small branch (I think preferably low down) on
a woody plant in foil for a season it (so light is excluded but so that it
does grow out of the tip) it tends to revert to a juvenile state and can
then be rooted much more readily than a straight Fall hardwood cutting. This
certainly has a name which I have also forgotten.

As I say, has anyone actually tried this as a way to produce own-rooted
trees? I was thinking of trying it on quinces -- as an alternative to
grafting them.

Richard


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