Hi Lovelies,
First, my apologies that the past few posts were the products of automatic scheduling. I had to go out of town at the last minute, and was absolutely determined to keep up with Blog-tober. There’s a frost predicted this week, which is a total bummer – but it also means that I’ll finally be able to get some final things done before winter. One of the items on my to-do list was to take some rose cuttings and make more for the future.
Propagating plants is really appealing to me, mainly for the reason that I’m essentially increasing my stock for very little to no cost. The variety I’m using in this post is an unnamed garden rose that had been living at my house long before I moved here. The blooms are a gorgeous dark red and smell strongly of a peppery myrrh – I can’t get enough!
The process isn’t rocket science, in fact, that’s one of the reasons that I love it so much. First, I find stems with new green growth. In my experience, the best stems are those that are still pretty small in diameter. Though I’ve seen online that folks have used cuttings as thick as a pencil, I’ve never had success with anything this large. I stick to cuttings just slightly larger than a spaghetti noodle.
After I’ve made my cuttings, I strip all cut the very top set of leaves and growing point. Ideally, I like to have at least three nodes that I’m able to push down into the soil. This can be done directly into the garden – however, I prefer a nursery pot. Newly rooted cuts will be very small when they resume growth in spring, which means they can be easily lost among grass or weeds.
After I’ve pushed the cuttings down into the soil, the only thing left to do is cover with a mason jar and leave overwinter. Cuttings that I take in October usually have no problems here, as the snow and rain keep things nice and moist. I like making more cuttings than I need so that I have a greater chance of success. Some prefer to use rooting hormone with the cuttings, though most take root for me, even without it.
Have you ever made cuttings of roses? How did you do it? Hope you have a great day, much love!
Thank you for sharing.
I grow a lot of Guadalupe roses, it is a strong growth of roses, but this year it’s a very serious pest, and now the situation is not good.
I decided to use you simple way, I hope I can succeed…..:)
Good luck!
I did not have a clue as to how to do this, thank you!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope it helps!
I had always thought roses were really hard to grow. Then Mr. Fairweather arrived home with a rose plant called Moody Blue. I nearly killed it. He pruned it back and rescued it and it’s now got its first few buds ready to burst. Probably way too late in the year but I can’t wait to see them. It could be the start of a beautiful relationship.
Will have to give it a try.
Good luck!
We’ve had a 100% success rate using raw honey as a rooting medium. It feeds the plant and has antibacterial properties.
Great tip! I’ve never heard that, thanks for sharing!
Do you leave it outside to overwinter?
Yes! Just ignore it until things start warming up in spring and then take the jar off. I took a peak at mine today and was happy to see some new growth already. 🙂
And update: After reading this post last year, I cut a few rose stems and stuck them into my typical 50/50 mix of gravel and compost for cuttings, and then let them overwinter rather “raw” without any special protective features. That is, I just let the cuttings “tough it out” over the winter. And while not all survived, the results were still very good.
https://stcoemgen.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/2016-03-22-13-52-11.jpg
Thank you very much for this post,. As it really gave me the idea to try to propagating roses, and I am quite fond of roses. 🙂
http://stcoemgen.com/2014/05/24/vines-n-roses/
Glad to hear you had some success! I was just thinking about an update!