I'd like to show my 1 month air layer project with an air-pot, moss, and clonex.  This is one solid root mass.  I am gonna take my chances and leave the figs on and see if they ripen.  I ended up with three nice air layers this same size and pruned them back.

  
 


 

Wow!  That is incredible!  1 month? 

Did you girdle?  Multiple girdles?

Very nice work and nice looking tree!

two girdles 1/8" wide 1" apart.

Amazing :)

Holy moly!

That is impressive. I guess the combo of the hormone/moss/airpot is a winning formula. I'll have to give that a try. Keep us informed about your figs maturing. Mike in Hanover, VA

Wow that's a nice root mass!!!

Awesome work. Congrats!

Sort of puts in stone that root pruning concept!  Congratulations!  I've been only using root pruning pots for 3 years, but amazing how well the concept works on air layers!  I'd try it on all my figs, but not wishing to ship a ton of air layers....  Still, back-ups in case of gopher damage............

Great post!

Thanks!

Suzi

Incredible.  I had never heard of these air pots until now.  Thanks for sharing!

Impressive to say the least! The air pots are nice but how do they work in the hot south? I don't think I could keep up with the water demand here in the summer.

SWEET! What variety fig?

Yep, i am as about as far south as you can get, i am in Corpus Christi, TX.I have a water timer every 4 hours for five minutes, using spot spitters. My temps are mid 80's at night and high 90's - 100 during the day. The every 4 hours is more for keeping the roots cool but they do dry out if i switch to an every 8 hour cycle, in the bigger airpots i use miracle gro coco coir by itself and the otherr potting media i use is 511 mix. It has really good drainage but the coir does too. It is a golden celeste fig.

OMG.  You just made me feel lucky!  We lurk above and below 100 high temp day, but nights are smooth and cool... lurk around 60..give or take 10 degrees.  We get these winds every afternoon.  This is why we can grow wine grapes.  The grapes love the lack of humidity and the winds.

Nice fig that can put up with all that!

Suzi

LOL...this is amazing...

Where to get that Air-Pot material?

Hi pwbum1,
This is a nice start, but another hard phase will now start as the tree will have to sustain herself with those roots.
That's for sure a nice volume of roots for a one month period of waiting.
Keep us informed .

[QUOTE=Aaron4USA]LOL...this is amazing...

Where to get that Air-Pot material?[/QUOTE]

Cal Growers is one of three USA distributors. Get it local as you will pay more for shipping than the material costs.

Per usual I will say NICE

Well done. I am still waiting for my air layers from June to show roots.

Wow!  That's pretty cool.  There was a thread the other day concerning root pruning.  One of the posters mentioned that we should put our heads together to create a self root pruning pot since root pruning after 4 years is a bear of a job.  Looks like air-pot beat us to the punch.  From an air layering perspective, the product looks like it does a wonderful job.  I wonder from a container growing standpoint how well it does.  The info commercials suggest that it works great as a container grower as it greatly reduces root circling and therefore growers can extend their growing time by double or more before one needs to up-pot.

My question is how quickly does the soil in the air-pot dry out?  I'm assuming growing a fig in an air-pot would need ALOT more daily water than a conventional pot.  I could also envision individuals adding a wicking basket to the bottom of the air-pot to turn it into a SIP.

How did you keep your moss moist during the air layering process?

EDIT:  search and you will find... this post indicated that air-pots were prone to significant moisture loss and if using them as a container, potting soil recipes should be amended to enhance water retention.  Also, up-potting was a bit of a pin as the roots grow into the air pot walls making it hard to separate the pot from the root ball.

Still... root production seems to be extremely prolific in these things and a combination of the air-pot with a SIP system might create a great container environment.

Thanks.

Strange but it works!

It looks like it would have be ready in 3 weeks ? 

Very interesting concept...I am interested in trying it...
Thanks for introducing it to all of us Charlie :)
http://www.calgrowers.com/index.php?app=cms&ns=display&ref=video

Good work and good photos.
Is that a 1L airpot? And did you cut the center of the base to slide down/over the trunk?

wow.
You grow pineapple on fig tree?

[QUOTE=JD]Good work and good photos.
Is that a 1L airpot? And did you cut the center of the base to slide down/over the trunk?[/QUOTE] Yes I cut the center out of the base to slip around the limb first.  It is labeled as a .3 gallon sized airpot, not sure about the metric size, it has a black base, I know most of the base are color coordinated for their size...yellow, orange, green and what not.

[QUOTE=smithmal]W

How did you keep your moss moist during the air layering process?

Thanks.[/QUOTE]

I soaked the moss in water and clones solution, it was like a teaspoon to a cup of water, attache the pot, stuffed it with the moss, then wrapped it in GLAD Press n Seal and duck taped the top and bottom, and finally wrapped in aluminum foil.  If you see the pictures of the roots, you see the brown spots, that is where they came out of the airpots and hit the press n, seal plastic.  Every few days I would press on the aluminum foil to break any roots that might have made it out of the holes, I saw a video on youtube mentioning  air layer with the airpots and that is how they explained to do the root pruning without air contact.

Is there a fabric type container that can zip up. Just place, fill, add moisture and zip.

This a Charlie project, I would buy them for air layering.