Steve,

What you say makes sense.

It takes two growing seasons to produce a finished grafted rose (three growing seasons if you count the one year old root stock plant that is grafted with the scion bud in the rootstock's second year of growth).

I propagate roses from cuttings a lot. I enjoy it. From a June trimming of a current year's, green wood growth, taken from a dead headed flowering stem that has just dropped its petals, it takes me from that June to June the next year to get a gallon size rose. It is exactly equivalent in size to the Chamblee's, Heirloom, and Roses Unlimited gallon size rose. This is accomplished with a fall through winter long, non-growing sleep in my fruit cellar. This is essentially having a finished gallon size rose after 6 months of active growth.

I cannot see own root propagation of roses to gallon size being more difficult, expensive, time consuming, or labor intensive than growing a grafted rose to a much larger size, older age by 2.5 years, and with a bigger investment in overhead.

Please educate me if I am wrong.

Moses

Not to mention that many small roses are grown using tissue culture. While that has a higher initial cost, once the protocol is mastered, one can make a lot of roses from very little plant material.

I may be wrong, but I always thought the issue with own-root plants vs grafted had to do with economies of scale. The own-root growers tend to be smaller operations, offering rarer varieties and (often) more of them. They cater to rose nerds (definitely a niche market), whereas the grafted plants tend to be produced by big horticultural companies for sale to a wider rose-loving demographic.

Vaporvac,

Talk about tissue culture, a bit OT from me in this post, but it may be of interest....

Most of my pot cultured fig trees are the product of tissue culture. There is a fig mosaic virus, just like the dreaded rose mosaic virus, but manifests itself with an irregular checker board pattern on the leaves. It is supposedly species specific to figs. Loss of vigor occurs to virused fig trees, especially if they are growing under stress.

The tissue cultured figs come in, growing in 2-4" little liner pots, with coat hanger wire thin stems, about 6" tall. They grow like weeds. In just one season, two foot tall trees are produced. I've even had figs form on spring purchased tissue cultured fig trees. It takes about 4-5 years from a little liner tissue future fig to be a young mature fig tree producing a good crop of figs. Prices vary from $4.00 to $10.00 for these little tissue culture fellows.

Moses

I think K S has hit the nail on the head, but I'll add my two cents - if certains varieties are difficult to 'strike' as own-roots, then these varieties being more expensive as own-root makes sense. Also, doesn't it take more plant tissue/mother plants to produce own roots? If a cutting that would make one own-root would make three budded plants, then own-root nurseries face more limiting factors to the size of their inventory than budded growers would.

That wouldn't explain charging $45 for 'Charles de Mills' aka King of Suckering (Heirloom doesn't even stock him, I'm not quite being fair).

Heirloom has New this year South Africa, but Chamblees had it last year. I find the price difference an insult on my intelligence. It's not double the price, it's more like 4 times. One of the last google reviews I read on Heirloom said they were the only place that sells own root roses. I don't know if the person was lying, or really doesn't know any better. Where would they even get an idea like that? I asked my husband how much those huge bags of Black Kow cost from last year, after seeing they had 1 pound of manure for almost 9 dollars. He informed me that the 50 lb bags were less than 5 dollars. Being a little overpriced doesn't annoy me that much, but that's not a little. They are ridiculous. I feel bad for anyone that is shopping there, if they think those are normal prices. I know it's probably a last resort for people that really want something not available elsewhere, but I wouldn't give them a dollar. The warranty description kind of contradicts it's self too. Everything that rings an alarm bell for shadiness is on that website. (at least for me) No judgement intended on anyone that likes them.

Edit I agree Moses it can't be so expensive. A good example is ARE. Huge plants, for less than half that price. My order from ARE had canes as large as bare root grafted, yet were more than 50% cheaper than their 1 gal. I don't see how they are staying in business, but I guess you don't have to sell much at those prices.

Reminds me of how Uwe Reinhardt, who died less than 2 months ago, answered the question "Why is health care in the US so much more expensive than anywhere else in the world"? (Particularly as outcomes are poorer here than in many developed countries).

He observed: "It's the prices, stupid."

If I grew budded roses, I would have to have a lot of land as you are supposed to let the land go fallow for two years and grow the next crop on different soil. The price of land to-day is out of sight, I would be looking at my roses and thinking condos!!

A simple cost analysis should work. Add up all the costs, including owner and employee pay, and healthcare benefits, and then divide that by the total number of plants actually sold to paying customers. As an exercise, you may want to figure out how many plants you would have to sell.

I guess I was always under the impression that own root was more expensive because it takes longer for the plants to reach a big size, but I really don't know that much about it. Of course, if they ship the plants while they are still rather small (like say, Rose Petals or High Country) they tend to be less expensive, but then the buyer has to grow them on. ARE and Roses Unlimited both supply nice big own roots at what seems to me a fair price. I have never ordered from Chamblees, but those are great prices - I wish they had more roses that I wanted. Heirlooms are a nice size, but their prices are just getting to be absurd, and I won't order from them again unless they have something I really want that I can't get anywhere else. There's a lot of variation in pricing of bare root grafted roses, too, but I guess they tend to be in the $20-$30 range. Moses, I'm impressed with how quickly you get your cuttings to get to a nice size! I wish I had better luck with cuttings, I keep trying but my success rates of them taking are so spotty!

Appeal of grafting to producers is larger specimen quicker.