Nursery stock, $60 worth!

[Larz]

The local garden Center opens up small markets across town in the spring. As summer sets in and the plants get too hard to maintain in the heat, they close down the markets and offer up the stock at fantastic prices. I got these three maples for $60 total. Each is 3 feet tall or more. I'll keep the alive until early spring, then repot and figure out what to do with them. Of course they are grafted, so maybe air layers, cuttings then chops the following year? Yatsubusa, Ukigumo, and Tobiosho.

I realize a chop will take me back to the grafted cultivar, which I understand is typically a Queen maple, is that correct? I hope I can layer several trees from each, and see if some cuttings will take. A lot to experiment with and only $20 each!

Sorry, not sure why first two photos rotated. All taken the same way!

 

[Vance Wood]

I would keep the trees intact rather than chopping them back down to the scion, to me that's simply dumb. These tree are more valuable as parent stock for a vast array of cuttings and air layers. You can always grow J.Maples from seed easily and in a few years have a bunch of trees you can do almost anything with. The trunks on these guys are not so spectacular as to encourage this technique. The grafted species are not that common you can afford to throw them out just to get at the trunks and in turn lose those as well.