A healthy Brug will after the 1st week have developed small white nodes on the area below the water. A brug that is having problems will not developed the nodes. After the 1st week if the cutting feels pliable is my be going bad. A good idea is to pick them up everyday and look at them you will soon be able to tell the good ones from the bad. Bad Brung- bad pic but you get the idea good Brung Notice the brug to the left without nodes- these are problem cuttings. If you have enough you might want to discard them or isolate them into a small container with rooting hormone. Small and flexiable ones should be isolated also as these will proably contaminate the bucket. If you do not have time to pick each one up then smell the bucket it it has an ordor there is a problem and it must be cleaned. Secondary growth is a good idication that all is well. Two buckets that had problems but as an experiment were continued with marginal brugs cuttings. Once these were removed the problem ceased. Rooting in a bucket is fun and you should try other items. It works very well. I have done a rose, jasmine, honeysuckle ( in the last 4 weeks) and will try some passion flower just for kicks. I bet you see other items in there. It does not seen to effect the brugs at all. Here is the last of my cuttings from 1 month ago these were the slow ones ready to go fishing-Floundering. The other are 18 inches tall. Now for the ones that do not want to put out roots but have nodes it is best to plant them. (I guess) It worked for me. I had one extremly large cutting(thick) it just would not make roots so I decided to do the lay it flat and cover all but 1/3 of the top. Well 2 10" cuttings made 9 plants. It seems to work well for very thick woody cuttings. Most of these are going elsewhere so maybe they will update the renegade bucket saga. PS- I did these with well water direct, the 1st ones were done with Reverse Osmosis water what I drink from the well. I guess water is like plasma the better the water the better the results. Municipal water should be good but let it sit for a day so the chlorine comes out. That is the update hope everyone had a happy holiday. I did figure how to add my trade list and clippings so browse if you want. Jim

Joey: Very good questions. Here are what I learn about own-root roses: 1) Where they are bred and the TYPE OF SOIL & weather predicts where they will be successful. Roses bred in acidic & rainy & less sun England will be successful in acidic & high rain East coast. But roses bred in alkaline & hot & sunny Southern France will be successful in alkaline clay & sunny garden. 2) How vigorous the root is? The newly bred roses ARE VERY VIGOROUS as own-roots, and can survive BOTH Pakistan 113 F hot summer and my zone 5a winter of -20 below zero. Vigorous roots are both long (at least 2 feet deep) and spreading wide. Vigorous roots are also THICK to store water in dry summer/winter. Dee-lish can die to the crown, but the root is so deep that it can go for 1 month without watering, either through a cold & dry winter or hot summer. Dee-lish has a climber as a parent (Graham Thomas). If a rose is bred with a climber in its genetics, it will have deeper root. 3) It's the selection of the fittest. In breeding roses, there will be many seeds ... and only the fittest seed sprout up to be the most vigorous root or to be disease-resistant. The other dozen to 100 seeds either don't germinate, or sprout some wimpy plants that black-spot & less petals, or can only bloom once a year. This answer your question directly, breed roses in your cold zone and see which seed can sprout in extreme cold temp., and which seed has the deepest root to survive the winter. English roses, bred in a colder climate than France: most have climber-heritage or Old Garden Roses' genetics, and English roses are actually favored by hot climate folks in Pakistan due to the vigor of their roots. Deeper root = more weather resistant. I hang out in Facebook Fragrant Rose Lovers group, where most Pakistan posters are. English roses are favored in both extreme hot and extreme cold climate due to the toughness of their roots to survive long periods of drought.

Hi Msgirl: I love your honesty .. I looked up El Catala on HMF, and I broke out laughing when I saw 3' in height .. translate to a slow & wimpy rose. Heirloom Roses is notorious for small root & slow start. Now they raise the price to $27 per band !! If the root is big & solid, then it flowers sooner (roses from Weeks & star are grafted on Dr. Huey, see below). http://scvrs.homestead.com/Rootstock.html I got roses from Heirloom Roses as own-roots and their roots were like alfalfa-sprout, instead of big & long & woody like Dr. Huey. High Country Roses in Colorado sells BIGGER own-roots at $14 per band (they ship to Hawaii). I got Austin roses from them with blooms on !! About Dr. Huey rootstock: They are native to alkaline region, thus most healthy in alkaline clay. Dr. Huey itself tends to mildew, so high potassium helps. If your soil is acidic, then raise the pH with lime to above neutral. Lime will supply calcium besides raising soil pH. Decades ago my neighbor bought a bunch of grafted-roses-on-Dr.Huey, he planted in our rock-hard clay at 7.7, and they were blooming like mad & zero diseases. I was jealous since I had just moved from an ACIDIC clay region, and gave up on roses due to black spots. Since Dr. Huey is a woody-root, calcium should be supplied at 1/2 of potassium. Calcium is what makes plant tissue firm, thus more resistant to pests like thrips, mites, and aphids. When nitrogen is supplied via chemical, the quick burst of growth makes plant tissue softer, more susceptible to pests. I have been growing tomato for 30 years, and the only 2 years with big-fat tomato worms, plus blossom-end-rot were the years I used chemical fertilizer 10-10-10. Other years with ORGANIC slow-released nitrogen like manure, cocoa mulch, alfalfa .. no worms, no blossom-end-rot, since those ORGANIC sources supply low-nitrogen, decent potassium & calcium & trace elements.

Got curious about compost tea. This is the second time I checked. Early this summer time I spent 1 hour researching but was disappointed. Here's one link from United Kingdom on compost tea (unbiased, NOT sponsored by compost-tea industry): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/gardeningadvice/11121288/Compost-tea-does-it-really-work.html " What did they find? In a glasshouse study on lavender and choisya, none of the compost teas had any effect on growth or on susceptibility to botrytis (grey mould) or spider mites. Sometimes plants treated with compost tea were taller, sometimes they were shorter, sometimes there was no difference. Sometimes plants treated with compost tea were of higher quality, but often they weren’t, and treated choisya plants at one nursery were significantly worse. In short, the effects of compost teas were “extremely inconsistent”. Other links from U.S.A: http://www.walterreeves.com/landscaping/compost-tea-does-it-work/ From University of New Hampshire: https://extension.unh.edu/articles/Does-compost-tea-really-work From University of Vermont: http://www.uvm.edu/vtvegandberry/factsheets/composttea.html Excerpt from above link: " It’s not clear whether it’s necessary to aerate during compost tea production. Aeration can speed up the production time, but it may also add to equipment cost and complexity. There are claims that aeration helps kill off the organisms that can cause illness. Very few studies have compared aerated and non-aerated compost teas. Some recent research. A 2-year study by the Rodale Institute and Pennsylvania State University evaluated the use of aerated compost tea for disease suppression and crop stimulation in grapes, potatoes, and pumpkins. During year one, approximately 50% suppression of powdery mildew was observed in the compost tea treated grape plots. A slight reduction of gray mold, along with an INCREASE in the level of downy mildew, was observed in the compost tea treated plot during the first year at one of the vineyards. Compost tea failed to suppress powdery mildew on Howden pumpkins in year one, but reduced the number and size of pathogen colonies in year two. Compost tea did not reduce severity of late blight on Superior potatoes when disease was present in year two. " http://www.uvm.edu/vtvegandberry/factsheets/composttea.html *** From Straw: FOR ROSES, just spraying with alkaline tap water alone is enough to suppress mildew, as testified by Roseseek (Kim Rupert) in CA and rosarian Dave Boyd in HMF. For mildew, just plain tap-water spray (alkaline pH over 8) is enough to contain mildew, as rosarian Dave Boyd in a dry climate (only 13" of moisture per year) testified in HMF: http://www.helpmefind.com/gardening/l.php?l=3.4748