On April 29, 2008, Dr. Anthony Lebude Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist, and I put in a field demonstration at two sites, C& G Nursery and Ponder Nursery. At these sites Dr. Lebude is looking at the effectiveness and increased rooting for some of our mountain natives. This type of vegetative propagation is called layering. Layering has been done for years on brambles and other plants where the stems can be placed under soil. In this demonstration, we cut off all of the foliage on Rhododendron maximums. We left approximately 8-12 inches of stalk. At this point we placed hardware fencing around the plant and secured it with tie straps. There was about 2 inches from the stalk to the edge of the fencing; fencing was 36 inches tall. We then placed fine pine bark/ soil amendment inside the fenced in area. The bark was packed down around the plant, and the height of the bark was about 2-4 inches above the last stem. We expect to have field ready transplants by the spring of next year.
This system, if it is successful on max, will enable you to reproduce a range of transplants, per mother plant. In previous experiments Dr. Lebude has demonstrated a range of 4-10 plants, per mother plant. If this works as well in our nurseries, this might be a viable way of reproducing transplants on your site instead of collecting plants from the forests.
We will visit this site on the Avery County Cooperative Extension Center Summer Tour in July.
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