[Budley Doright]

he Ninth Circuit has long held that “marijuana cuttings must have root formations to be considered plants for sentencing purposes.” United States v. Robinson, 35 F.3d 442 (9th Cir. 1994). The Court held in Robinson that “[u]ntil a cutting develops roots of its own, it is not a plant itself but a mere piece of some other plant,” and adopted the rule that cuttings are not "plants" unless there is readily observable evidence of root formation. Such readily observable evidence of root formation requires “observable roots or root hairs,” and not merely a structure or swelling from which roots will emerge

One of the odd advantages that air layers have over normal clones.......

for a cutting to be a plant......2 things have to occur....

1. it has been cut from the plant....

2. it has roots.....


Consequently.... an air layer...as long as its on mom.....isnt a clone at all......

I believe that can be exploited for the purposes of plant count.....

[HerBnGorE(illa)]

Taking that a step further, if u did an underground layering of multiple branches and never cut the "runners" could we call it one plant with multiple root zones?

...that was deep. Shoulda chopped that last harvest a tad sooner.

[MrBelvedere]

Great idea for plant counts!

[Budley Doright]

Originally Posted by HerBnGorE(illa)

Taking that a step further, if u did an underground layering of multiple branches and never cut the "runners" could we call it one plant with multiple root zones?

...that was deep. Shoulda chopped that last harvest a tad sooner.

Let me say this..... I dont know how good cannabis is at this...

But I know with a tomato plant....and blackberry plant..... if you bury branches they will form roots....

I presume this is the reason for the law....that a plant with multiple root zones ....should not be counted as multiple plants...

Let me also say..... without giving it away......you are dancing around the experiment Im planning.....

But Im still not going to say exactly what it is.....

But I think if you have some interest in this stuff you will find my experiment interesting....


I have explored using a mom in 2 ways....

1.... a disposable mom.... where she is trained to a certain number of branches....those branches are air layered and the mother discarded...... I like this method a lot.....

2. A mom which is pruned carefully and a branch here and there over time are used for an air layer....


A disposable mom..... is effectively vegging several plants at once....

one day its a plant with multiple root zones....

the next day after the clones are harvested you have 8 pretty large plants.....

As I have said....I plan to compare a normal clone from day 1 .....with a airlayer....like this.....on its day 1...

the day you cut the clones from mom....

[Budley Doright]

OK..... Im going to start a basic air layering experiment...

but first let me give you some background on why Im doing this....

I have done a more than modest amount of grafting....the fruit tree kind of grafting...

ONe type of grafting is called reworking a tree......

That means you can take one kind of apple tree like red delicious and convert it to another type like honeycrisp.......

What they warn you not to do...is to remove all the old delicious branches....until your honeycrisp grafts have taken...... once they have taken...... you can go back and remove any of the old delicious branches......

A common method is to keep a nurse branch...... one branch to keep things flowing in the plant.....



Let me add also..... a commom way of killing a tree is by ringing it....

that means you remove a ring of bark from the tree ....it will die......

thats because the green cambium layer....also in cannabis....

does the transport from leaves to the roots......

[Budley Doright]

In my 1st big experiment..... I had a mom with 8 branches ..... I air layered 7 of them leaving a nurse branch......

Everything worked as expected ....better actually .......

even though I harvested the airlayers early ....even those without roots ....eventually did root..... another experiment....

This new experiment will start from my pretty dismal looking used up mom....with one nurse branch......

What I plan to do with this plant.... is remove the old stem....leaving just the nurse branch.....

then down pot to reduce its footprint from 5 to less than 1 gallon......(its taking space under my gavita)

I will only use about 3/4 of a gallon because I plan to airlayer the last remaining branch...

That tells me danger danger danger....due to the fact I have effectively cut all leaves from the roots.....

I think this would kill the plant eventually .....but I suspect it will root before it will die....

the second part....is to not use all the bullshit I use with the rapid rooters...the plastic wrap...twist ties..... and just bury the airlayer...... and let it do its thing in constantly moist soil....... care to be taken to make sure it never dries out.....

So Ive got 2 little things going...

1... can you take all the branches or must you need a nurse branch.....

2... doing an air layer then simply burying it......

same scarification..... same clones.... just no air layering.....this is then not air layering..... but simple layering......

[Budley Doright]

I also wanted to hook you up with a couple air layering threads the got me interested in this some years ago....

foolishly....I believe now..... I did not pursue the idea.....

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?threadid=250775

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?threadid=88797

ANyway giving some credit to those who did work before me....

I do in fact intend to do a number of experiments following my own goal of moving to air layering instead of cloning....

Im hoping I can interest others in doing their own experiments and teach me a thing or two as well......

I have to admit.... I have a little trepidation about this....because there is so little info on this.....

but I dont understand why........

So thats why Im sort of hedging my bet along the way....... everything seems to be positive....

yet there is very little use of the technique....

[stoned-trout]

Originally Posted by HerBnGorE(illa)

Hey burnt rope,

Do u know if the regular underground layering works on canabis??

yes it does.. yeehaw...I have bent over small flexible plants and buried the part in a trench and cover with soil ..I don't worry about numbers so regular cloning is the easiest way to go for me.. I tried all this stuff 15 years ago or more...layering I learned in school... my clone s dont miss a beat ..they look awesome till they start rooting and growing then some yellowing tells me time to feed more..foolproof setup..this is small run 1 tray and only 10 clones I think

[FatherEarth]

A woody stem when cut from the plant will take longer. On the plant it would root the same as the "scarification" will induce the rooting as the hormones in the plant are available where as if it was cut off the plant these rooting hormones would not be available in as high of concentrations...

[Budley Doright]

yes it does.. yeehaw...I have bent over small flexible plants and buried the part in a trench and cover with soil ..I don't worry about numbers so regular cloning is the easiest way to go for me..

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I on the other hand believe I see real advantages to air layering being in a plant count state....

And the ball is rolling.... more folks growing under plant count rules....

So.... as I was thinking about the possibilites with air layering..... doing more with fewer plants...... my mind started thinking about the implications...

so I wanted to give everyone a view inside my head......

Ick..... maybe I should rephrase that.....