Excellent experiment result

I've put pics up somewhere of the willow structures in my garden, with the centrepiece being the willow den.

Sorry, no pics of this experiment because my camera wont focus close up, and its a bit of a close up type thing.

I read in one of my books about how plants work, that if a bud higher up a branches starts to grow, it releases a growth inhibitor that flows back down the stem, so that lower buds stay dormant. The book was putting the emphasis on apple trees, but I guessed the principle was probably the same on all sorts of plants.

Some of the willow sticks that make up the lad's den are a bit sparse lower down, so a couple of weeks ago I took my stanley knife, and cut a slither of bark out directly above some dormant buds that I wanted to grow. I cut horizontally right through the bark, literally level with the top edge of the bud in question. I cut round so that the slice was about half inch wide, equating to about 1/3rd of the diameter of the stick. I then cut down into that cut at about 45's such that I removed a tiny wedge of bark directly above the bud. I did this on three buds on the same stick, but deliberately left other buds on the same stick to act as 'controls'.

A couple of weeks later, two of the target buds have grown into shoots about an inch long, and the third is just starting to grow now. The 'control' ones are still very dormant.

 

We learn something new everyday Clueless, I bet you're chuffed.

 

I am Sheal. I'd read of the technique in a book, but it sounded really fiddly and I was sceptical about its chances of success. Now I've seen both how easy and how successful it is with the willow, which admittedly is probably an easy subject, I'm looking forward to testing it on other stuff too now.

 

Its great when a gardening technique works , in a controlled test like yours. Most off the time we follow instructions in a "monkey see , monkey do " fashion, not really sure on the real effect that our actions are producing .