chinese juniper air-layer question...

or just thought verification, if you please.

i have a chinese juniper that i started the airlayer on in spring...
my work was sloppy at best... rushed even.
3-4 months later i am quite sure that there are not enough roots yet to severe it...

but my quandary is, that if i wait much longer, the few roots there are may not have time to settle into a pot before winter hits us (it will be wintered in a protected garage)

but if i leave it on until next year, what roots there are will freeze from exposure (despite being wrapped in sphagnum and plastic)... correct ?

any thoughts on letting it sit a bit longer vs just removing it now treat it like a partially rooted cutting

sorry no pics...

and my get-out-of-jail-free card is that the branch was being removed either way for design purposes on the main tree...
so i will not be heartbroken if it doesnt make it... it is just an interesting branch...

Far be it from me,a tropical person, to advise you, an arctic person: but I think you had better go for it, Kevin. I really do not think that air layer would survive the brutality of your winter. But, as usual, just another two bit opinion.

George.

I would leave it. The roots on the main tree freeze right? If it doesn't have enough roots to live on its own yet why try? Like you said,the branch is going anyway. Leave it and see what happens. Maybe wrap some more moss around it for some more insulation.
Nothing ventured,nothing gained.

I'd probably leave it and rap some burlap around it, maybe some dry moss in there around the layered area.

More than likely you might tear some roots removing it and working some of the moss out of the roots.

Good luck...........

I've used several layers of bubble wrap, as insulation, around air layers that aren't quite ready to be detatched, in the past. It usually works well and they can then be detatched, quite early in the second season.

dynamite !
thanks guys... one less chore for this year
(other than gently unwrapping it and re-wrapping it thicker with some additional insulator before winter)

mike - i had thought of what you said, but the roots in a pot are different than the super soft delicate airlayer roots, but with the suggested additional insulators, i feel ok about leaving it on.

and seeing as no-one apart from tropical george commented on the possibility of severing it and treating it like a partially rooted late season cutting, i think will let it ride until next year...

thanks again !

I layered a Japanese maple last summer. I left the layers in place all through last winter and they lived. I seperated them after bud break to only have a late brutal frost kill them. I wrapped them in so much moss that the layers looked like soccer balls on the tree. The mother tree didn't make it either. Mice ate all of the bark off of it almost up to the layers.

well that sounds encouraging