NISHIKI GAWA CUTTINGS

DISCOVERY BONSAI

I recently acquired this pine bark Japanese maple (Acer Palmatum’Nishiki Gawa’) from Owen Reich. It has superb genetics, as the internodes are short, leaf shape is perfect, and it has an excellent skeleton to work with. Thus, it is the perfect candidate for cutting propagation. After about two hours of work, I ended up with around one hundred cuttings.

_H2A0859 Watered akadama in cedar grow box

I used my rain barrel water with Rhizotonic by CANNA to dampen the akadama soil while removing any excess dust from the medium. The wet akadama will compress around the cutting better than if it was dry, and I won’t have to water it for a bit after cuttings are placed (this is important on the gel hormone as watering might wash away some of the gel).

13537580_862758230544_1599774246957677189_n Cutting candidates are kept in a pile while thinning ensues