It's been in use for as long as I can remember. People simply poke holes in small pieces of Styrofoam & stick the cutting through the hole & float it on the aerated water/weak nutrient solution where it roots easily. You can also suspend 1/2 x 1/2 inch light grids at the water's surface & stick cuttings through the holes. Plants root quickly, but you still end up with brittle roots that are poor at absorbing O2 and that have difficulty making the transition from water to soil. I've tried it and still much prefer rooting in 100% perlite or Turface. Al

The absolute best system for propagation would be high-pressure aeroponics, but it's not cost-effective for most people. After that, I'd look to low-pressure aero machines like the EZ-Clone and the Rainforest. They are easy to duplicate. All they do it squirt water around inside the box where the cutting ends are. If you can't find videos of those machines working, you could visit a hydro store to see if they have any set up inside the store. Here's a tip for building your own - those two machines work a lot better on a timer and not spraying constantly, especially the rain forest. You can also root cuttings in something as simple as an air pump bubbling in a jar of water. An improvement upon that is to get a long air stone, put it in shallow water, and then suspend the cutting ends just above the water. As the air bubbles pop, they will wet the cutting ends. You can cut out an ice cube tray's bottom, cover it with foil, and use that to suspend the cuttings. Don't bother with rooting hormone in a hydro system like these - it gets washed off immediately. Those are some of my favorite methods, but there are many others. You just need to keep a favorable water & air mixture around the cutting ends. Some people use cups of perlite, vermiculite, rockwool, peat, coir, or a pro-mix combination. Even a wet paper towel or newspaper would work, at least in theory. Anything that holds moisture can be a rooting media. Propagation is a lot of fun. I am looking forward to turning my key lime tree into 50 little trees. I don't know much about roses, but just make sure you aren't propagating from any plant that was grafted to a root stock. You also want to make sure that the plant is not patented, or else you would owe a dollar or two of royalty fees for every cutting that roots.

FWIW, I took my cuttings that I put in the wrong mix (half peat half vermiculite), and I brought most of them in for the winter. Some of these had lost all their leaves but stems were still green. I dumped off the peat/vermiculite (mix drains well but does not soak up water, it was very dry, don't recommend it at all) and saw they had each formed a very small callus but no roots except two that I had set in the north window inside in a ziplock bag. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I mixed a new batch of half peat and half pearlite that George Mander recommended, restuck them, did not dip them in more rooting hormone, recovered with the soda bottle, put them in the east window, finally took the cap off because I lost some from rot, and several have rooted with the bigger roots you can see through the plastic cup and are putting out new leaves. I tried my first batch in potting soil, I don't think I would use that unless I could get the brand George uses and set up a misting system under lights he has such success with. I think it is difficult to transition them without a healthier root system into potting soil, that is where you are likely to lose the ones you were lucky enough to root even if they aren't so fragile. Two that had skinny tiny roots about 1/2 inch long, many and spread out (north window inside ones), I did put directly in potting soil very carefully rather than the peat/pearlite medium, and they both have died. I suppose each variety behaves differently. A note about the east window. If these hadn't already lost their leaves, I would have put them in a shadier spot. The ones that do have new leaves now, I took the cap off so they can get a little ventilation and am watching them like a hawk. I don't know if I will be able to get them through the winter or not.

I followed this advice which I gathered from various places, including garden web. But I am not sure of the time frame. I think I may have moved my lavendar cuttings too soon from the soil/water mix to all soil. However, they are still hanging on, and I am keeping them humid by spraying them daily. The advice says to keep the soil very moist, but I am not sure for how long.... What's the best way to move plants rooted in water to soil? I LOVE the idea of rooting things in water, but a few times I tried this and got roots, but the plants perished when I moved them to a pot. Could someone give me a few pointers on what I might have done wrong. Many thanks. Eileen -------------------- calistoga_al ca 15 usda 9 - Partially fill the pot with your mix, hold your rooted plant by the foliage and keep the roots just on the top of the soil. While holding in this position add more soil to the level desired. Lightly firm the soil. Set the pot in a bath of slightly warm water about halfway up the pot. Leave until the surface of the soil glissons from the water. Remove pot and put in shady area for a few days. Al -------------------- The info Calistoga provided is very good. If you don't succeed doing it this way, try dipping the delicate roots into a thin mud slurry first before inserting in the soil. This apparently protects the thin plant hairs. You might also try just gently sprinkling the soil over the roots and not tamping it down, and then misting the soil thoroughly to prevent the roots from breaking off. Make sure you keep them in shade or cover them with a plant propagator hood for the first few days to keep the humidity high. -------------------- bubba62 Yet another method is to leave the plants in water (you might want to put them in individual containers) and add coarse sand or fine aquarium gravel (anything that won't float or absorb water) until the roots are covered. Then allow the water level to decrease via evaporation until the plants adapt to the solid substrate, at which point it's an easy transfer to soil in a pot. ----------------------- I rarely do any rooting in water but I use bubba62's procedure if I want to plant one in soil that has been rooted in water. Soil roots are stronger than water roots. April, trim the roots to a manageable length, then pot up according to the good directions in the previous posts. Hydro to soil or vise versa can be a difficult task, a simple way to avoid problems is to treat the plant as if it was a cutting/clone. Immediately after transplant place a clear plastic bag with a few holes in it over the plant, after a few days make some more holes in the bag and so on until there is no difference between having the bag on or off. This method of keeping a higher humidity works very well and you should do fine.