Half-Baked Horticulture

Day 275: Contorted Filbert (aka Harry Lauder's Walking Stick, Corylus avellana "Contorta") is, according to numerous experts, an extremely difficult tree to propagate. Over the years, I've tried rooting it in water, heeling in (both using cuttings of new and old wood) and soil layering, but without success. I had considered grafting onto native Corylus stock, but this is not recommended because the parent stock is prone to suckering. Finally, I decided to go on line to see what those same experts could suggest, and found a consensus: air layering.

Okay, it's been many years since I air-layered anything (a leggy dieffenbachia, as I recall), so I went to YouTube for a refresher course. I could have pulled out a plant manual, but I was already sitting at the computer (I'm getting lazy these days) and I was curious to see if there had been any improvements made to the technique. The process is pretty basic. You strip a section of bark from a branch including a node in the section, scrape off all the cambium for an inch or so on either side of the node, treat the section with rooting hormone, pack wet peat or sphagnum around the wound and then seal it up in plastic wrap. Okay, got that. Nothing new there. However, one horticulturist recommended applying a layer of aluminum foil over the top of the plastic wrap to reflect the heat of summer sun. In the video's conclusion, he said, "And there you have it...baked potato on a stick."

Harry Lauder now sports three of the strangest fruits in my garden. It'll be a month or two before I can tell if this bit of half-baked horticulture will work.