I'm always envious of the master propagators here, doing wild germination projects and cutting extravanganzas. I'm more of a 'hope it self seeds' kinda girl, else get a punnet of seedlngs from Bunnings. I'm not very good at seed propagation and always leave it too late. I"m kinda hoping this week's Hive Garden challenge is going to give me some inspiration when people talk about their propagation techniques!

However, this time I thought I'd give air layering a go. Wouldn't it be cool to take little trees of my gorgeous lime and lemon with me to the new place? An Aussie backyard ain't the same without a citrus. And if you've been following me on Hive for long enough, you'll know how juicy and prolific these trees are. And I"m a lemon user - whilst I give bucketloads away, I use them daily, in water, in cooking, in tea.

So air layering, as far as I can tell, is just making a branch think it's rooted. You start by making a ball of coir or soil and banana or cucumber or honey or aloe (for reasons not clarified to me - weak rooting hormones? Antibacterial?) around the cut you'll make. You put this in gladwrap or a bottle or anything that can hold moisture and soil around a branch.

Now this is how annoying husbands are. Just as I'd gathered all my tools, which he KNEW I was doing, as he was part of conversation as I was looking for a sharp knife in his shed. I had all the stuff on the path and had just unravelled some glad wrap (cling film) and put the coir and the banana on it. He chose that exact moment to remove a rock for the new place which I did want him to do but not at that fucking moment. He was asking me for help and running over the stuff on path with the trolley. I was furious and had to tell him to stop and that NO, I wouldn't help him as I was BUSY. Ended up being my fault, but it was totally his. We literally have 5 acres of shit to get on with and he chooses to be as close to me as he can get. No that's not sweet, it's annoying.

As I was so mad, I didn't take any more photos. So please watch this short video which shows you how to do it. He uses a carrot. Perhaps this is to add moisture?

So now I have three strange fruits in my lime tree - glad wrapped coir around branches. Hopefully they'll take and grow roots so I can transplant them to a pot before we sell and move out of the house. I'm going to do some on my Mum's trees as well as see how they go. She's got a gorgeous lime that you can eat like a mandarin.

Have you tried this technique?

With Love,

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