If roses are in commerce, we tend not to do cuttings. But it's very satisfying to produce little plants of things people cannot just go out and buy.

Jeri

When I noticed vole activity in my rose garden this summer, I rooted a cutting of Fields of the Wood. The other roses in the bed could be easily replaced commercially. Now I need to figure out where I'm going to keep the new FOTW, a large shrub/small climber in my mostly shady yard.

Could you tell me exactly how you root a rose clipping? I have had this purple rose for at least five or six years and I don't have a clue what it is but I would love to have some more. I don't want to infringe on any patents but I really do want a couple more. I started a thread last year on this rose to attempt to get it named so I could purchase more because I would rather go that route but no one really figured out what it was. So I thought I would attempt to start me a couple more just for myself. Thanks, Judy

I hope you will excuse me for jumping in here as I am not a regular poster to this forum but do lurk alot.

Other than the reasons already posted, I think another reason to be able to root cuttings is to be able to introduce more gardeners to the world of roses. I am forever sticking any trimmings I have and then giving them away to people who want to give roses a try. Not all of them make it, turning their new owners into true "rose-a-holics", but some do. Creating a new source of plants for cuttings if I should ever lose a beloved plant and continuing the time honored tradition of "pass along" roses. Sharing rooted roses has also opened doors to sources [private gardens] where you just might find that much wanted rose that is no longer available commercially!

Finally, I have developed quite a local network of "rosie friends" by saying- "I have a nice little rose rooted, would you like to give it a try?"

Just my thoughts.
Susan

The knowledge of how to root roses can lead to something even more dangerous ... like the desire to make hundreds of the little boogers and start a nursery. :)

Now I can keep some of my beloved roses in commerce, and distribute them to unsuspecting gardeners ... like nova said. Many people have no idea that roses exist outside the J&P catalog.

I have a tutorial on my web site that shows a method of rooting roses that works very well. (link below)

Here is a link that might be useful: Click on

hartwood

that's a nice tutorial, thanks. I've tried many times and failed 80-90% on rooting roses and other things. I'm in FL zone 10 where many things flourish except for my cutting attempts. I will try again.

Many, many of my OGR's have perished this summer. It has been brutally hot but I don't know whether anything else caused their demise. I can't afford to re-buy all the dead so rooting will need to be part of my education.

Denise

Thanks Connie, I'm going to try it. I have two JP roses, I had 3 but one died and I don't want to buy anymore from them. So I'm going to try to root it so I can have another to complete the bed the way I wanted to.

True Randy! It is nice to be able to make new roseplants from cuttings. Both those hard to get roses that fall out of commerce and rare Old Garden Roses. And the sports you sometimes see on your roses ... many sports have been lost because they rotted for the amateurs ... mind you amateurs like me! Gosh I can seem to root roses ... I have very little succes!!! As soon as they start growing they die on me. Other time I stick some canes in the ground from roses I prune lightly in the summer time and they seem to make it quite often! I have tried ziplock- bags and coke bottles and they root, but die for sure later. This is why I learned to graft/or T-bud my roses on multiflora seedlings. 7-8 out of 10 plants make it! I grow rows of these in the former vegetable garden so I always have some ready for budding in July and August.

Thank you very much Hartwood! I will definitely try your method. Might even try to sneak me in a small order from your nursery. ha ha!! Don't tell my sweet hubby! Judy

Hi Nova,

Sent you an email!

Best wishes,

Reem

I tried my first cuttings this summer. I tried to root WS2000, but he got mildew and blackspot and died quickly. Now I tried to root him in a 2 liter pop bottle that I cut in half and filled with fertilome and amended with a little rose tone. I also tried to do that INSIDE.

Well, after the WS2000 cutting died, I randomly........more like on a whim just pulled WS2000 out and put in a Bishop's Castle cutting. I didn't expect anything of it, but just randomly had a finished bloom and wanted to see what would happen. I did dip the tip of the cutting in 1/4 diluted Miracle Gro liquid fertilizer(there is nowhere to get rooting hormone)......which should have burned it, but it never seemed to have a problem. I never watered the cutting or did a single thing to it. I also left it outside behind a potted mini so the sun didn't directly hit it, but it was getting sunlight. The soil is always moist becaused the top of the 2 liter is open, but closed enough that the moisture is retained inside. To my surprise, the Bishop's Castle cutting took off like gangbusters and has filled the bottom of the 2L bottle with roots and has sent out 3 new branches out of each leaflet. Beginner's luck I suppose.

Thank you, Connie, for your tutorial. I was very sad that the cuttings I tried to make of some rambling roses on a to-be-developed property never rooted, and that property is now razed and bare dirt.

That's a great tutorial and I would definitely like to try this soon. I wonder if I would have more success trying this in the winter or at least, late fall? It's so hot here - for me to find a "cool spot" is almost impossible for much of the time!

A funny rooting story from a couple of years ago.....we bought a property with an old farmhouse on it and there was the stereotypical scraggly rose growing in the front of the house, totally neglected and forlorn. So we thought "wow, here we have a chance to do some 'rose rustling' and let's get some cuttings and see what happens!" My dad rooted some of the cuttings for us, and gave us each a nice healthy plant. I couldn't wait to see what transpired and I was excited when it started blooming! Nice, red roses! Nice, red Dr. Huey! Actually, at the time, I didn't know what it was, I was just happy that it actually grew and bloomed. I still have mine in a pot and my dad has his planted in a spot by his cabin and his is trimmed in a bushy shape and was actually quite beautiful and stunning when it bloomed earlier in the year.

So much for our rose rustling!

Lynn

I think all of us rustlers have rescued a Dr. Huey or two. My best one was just down the road from me last year. There was a house doomed to become a strip center, with a tall rose growing at one of its front corners. It was mid-spring, too early to take cuttings, so I watched the rose weekly ... to get the cuttings as soon I thought they'd be viable. During one of my visits, I was interrupted by the foreman and the engineer for the project. When I told them what I was doing, they told me to take whatever I wanted, to hurry up and not hurt myself, and not to come back. I cut that rose to the ground, and tossed the whole thing into my truck, processed it into cuttings, and put them in the greenhouse. Since the wood was WAY too green, most of the cuttings quickly perished. Two of them rooted, however, and I anxiously awaited their first flowers .... wine-red with bright yellow stamens. Rats!

maryann, I get a huge ache inside when I see the destruction of plants and structures that comes with modern suburban development. It breaks my heart. What did the rambler you found look like? Around here, Dorothy Perkins is on the roadsides and up in the trees. That's where mine came from. I also know of a red rambler, that's not endangered yet, that I plan to rustle soon. I have a feeling that it's Excelsa (or something like that) since it blooms late just like DP does.

I'm glad all of you have used this method of rooting and that it's worked well. It was taught to me by a rose friend, and I am thankful to her every day. Without this, my nursery would still be an unattainable dream, and I would be without most of the garden friends that I have met over the past few years. Besides, there's just something mysterious and magical about being able to take a piece of a rose and make a whole new rose out of it.

Connie

Connie- Excelsa would be a great guess. We see it a lot down here as well. Dorothy Perkins is everywhere! Not as much Huey as he does not tend to like our soil here as a rule.

May I also add, please don't judge some of your babies too quickly. Many younger plants get disease much more readily than their older counterparts. We see it all the time. Also some plants just do not like being grown in smaller pots. Awakening and New Dawn are two that jump to my mind. They always look nasty when young. Full of icky leaves- once they get into either a larger pot or the ground they shake it off and turn into beauties!

Trish

Connie - the roses I saw had small pompom like blossoms and were a bright pink and a slightly darker pink. I don't know if they were variations of the same rose or different roses. They had very long canes, thorny canes and there was a lot of poison ivy and I'm not sure it was the right time to take cuttings. There wasn't much of a homestead there - an abandoned house was about 1.5 - 2 acres away though.

I just looked at Excelsa and Dorothy Perkins and I'm not sure that's it. The color was closer to Minnehaha. It was a spring bloomer.

I just lost my Robin Hood, six feet tall and 4 feet across which was a mass of bloom this spring to Rose Rosette Disease. Luckily I had rooted some broken branches so have backups. The same with 2 THORNLESS multifloras which I found on the property. 2 years ago they also came down with RRD and had to be destroyed. Luckily a few years earlier, I had taken some cuttings of them. And as Randy pointed out, many roses readily available as recently as last year are no longer available. Hopefully the cycle will swing back in time as the economy improves. I can remember in my youth when only two nurseries in the USA carried a descent number of OGRs.
Jim

I can't imagine gardening without some kind of propagation as part of my activity. In the circles I move in, I'm usually the rose expert; my friends propagate herbaceous plants, shrubs, grow from seed--something I've never gotten good at--or divide their plants that have rhizomes. They arrive smiling with flats of the precious fruits of their labor, just as I happily distribute my cutting-grown roses. I think that a lot of the appeal of gardening is its abundant nature and the way it encourages, even demands generosity. It's not just about making a garden that's beautiful to look at and be in. What is it? that gardening gives people a way to be good to each other? that it beautifies the world? Being able to propagate plants is very empowering. It not only is good for the pocketbook, but it reminds me, at least, that money isn't the only way to the good things in life. Who can feel poor who has a bed full of young Tea roses waiting to be planted in the fall? I'm a huge believer in swapping cuttings: sometimes the only thing that stands between me and a wonderful new rose is the question of where to get the dang twigs I need to root the variety. I don't want that to be an insurmountable barrier to other gardeners, so I give or exchange cuttings.
Melissa