Jeanny (and others): I hope you take my post a bit like thinking out "loudly" and lightly noticing my observations. Sorry about getting the terminology wrong; budding, grafting, occulating... Campanula; I have too look up "undercutting", all new to me. I follow guidelines from an old book I have, which has helped a lot. I order small root stock plants from the local nursery in spring, and there are different varieties to choose from; most are seed grown, but a few propagated from cuttings are available too. Those who are ordered from Holland can be rather advancedly made, in the sense that they are grown from parts of green leaves I think I have sprouted seeds from locally wild growing rubiginosa and canina (the most common wild roses around here). The few plants I was left with which was large enough for budding in august/september gave fine plants the following summer (sprout lots of seeds!!) It is a bit more work than ordering small plants ready to go in the soil. I just pick a bunch of hips in September / October (later too if there are any left on the plants) take out the seeds and put them in the freezer. When sowing I plant them directly and some times I have placed them in a wet coffee filter and put them in the fridge. Those who sprout I plant in pots. Wild roses usually have loads of hips if you pick them before the birds do (there are always enough even in December if I just bother too look for). Multiflora rootstock gone wild sets small red hips too, but I haven't sown seeds, at least not this far. I know a hill side where multiflora have self seeded quite a lot, and there are loads of hips to pick. Canina should at least work fine for old garden roses, and rubiginosa have a good reputation with hybrid perpetuals and portlands. I'm not sure with modern varieties and austins, but at least laxa and multiflora should be fine. Those are the most common varieties. The only speicis I order as small plants are rubiginisa, exept for multiflora and perhaps laxa, the others available are different canina hybrids only used for root stock. The most commonly used root stock varieties grow well and give larger plants than wild speicis, the exception is rubiginosa and multiflora. If you order root stock varieties you can choose thorn free varieties, which I imagine is very practical if you have a field full of them. I have only a few plants (about 12). It is more reliable to order ready made plants though. Rubiginosa and canina seeds need to have a few turns in the freezer to sprout when sown. When sowing I need a green house to get them ready for planting too; summers here are short and I need them in the ground as early as temperatures allow in spring to amount to anything in august-september (time of budding). I haven't figured out how to time the freezing and the sowing to get plants ready in time. In theory you can bud on plants from last year as long as the bark still is soft and easily allow the T-cut. The bark has too loosen from the "root-neck" enough to slide the bud under and grow back in place. The bark gets rougher and thicker as the plant gets older. I don't know which speices are common near you Jeanny, but I would give almost any wild rose a try. This post was edited by taoseeker on Wed, Aug 21, 13 at 16:15

I finally got around to figuring out the photo thing, thanks Wantoretire! I'm attaching a link to my first batch of pinch and poke (recovering mother plant lower right). That was over a year ago now. I kept those plants inside and planted them outside this past spring and had gorgeous beds. I wish I had taken photos of their peak. Next spring I don't believe I will have to buy very many new plants, because I brought several pots inside from which I plan on taking many many cuttings from, I'm shooting for 2 dozen 5 inch pots!! Right now they are gracing my sunny dining room, and doing great. If I keep this up I'm going to need a sun room! I'm also trying Petunias, and Geraniums, and might even try starting from seed. That's my next adventure. Cheers Here is a link that might be useful:

Tuderte, Is the area where those roses are planted inclined by any chance? This sucker seems to be growing out of a shallow root not out of the rootstock stem or main root mass. I guess it could happen regardless how deep you planted the bud union. If the soil is inclined this is easier to happen. If humidity stays at a shallow soil level (as often happens with clay) this is also more probable to happen. Also this could happen if there was a disturbance of some kind to the roots. (like a stray adze hit..) That sucker looks to me like a canina but I couldn't tell a Laxa sucker from another variety of canina if it hit me on the face.. I sympathise with your wind problem, we get exactly the same, only in our case the northerlies come in the salted not plain variety.. So do the southerlies btw..

John: I think this may be the info you're referring to with Pacesetter, apparently it could support a Hybrid Tea, tough who knows for how long. I have several things rooted, still they're all younger than a year, so I can't say if they have some potential just yet. There's this one white, big and sparsely-foliaged climber that roots very easily. In fact, it was my first rooted cutting I think. At first I thought it could be Fortuniana, but I'm not too sure now. The faster to root besides that have been minis and those are not very useful, because of the thin canes. My established plants are grafted because we don't have own-root nurseries here... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bluegirl, my climate & soil are, I presume, similar to yours. I am in Northeast Mexico, zone 9b, with alkaline, sandy soil. Looking at pictures of Caldwell Pink on hmf, I think I might've collected a couple cuttings of it a few weeks ago. Of course, it could've been any other small-flowered pink china. The plant was in the ground and very low growing, but it could've been recently pruned or something, I didn't ask the owner about that. It didn't have colored foliage, so it might have not been it... Ragged Robin sounds interesting, with the scented foliage and continuous bloom. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jasmine, blackspot is not a problem whatsoever here, thankfully! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kim: Thanks for addressing the thing with Purple Buttons, and breaking it down there. It makes sense that a plant's root system be proportional to the overall above surface size... Haha, I've already tried budding larger-on-smaller, it was very obvious it wasn't going to work, before even picking the knife. I just went and tried because it was very important for me to salvage that plant at the time and had nothing else. Which prompted this search... And yes, it was the plan to train it upwards. Would something like a tomato cage work? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I had completely forgotten about how most multiflora descendants dislike alkaline soil... So there goes Violette, (and perhaps Pink Clouds?). What if one day I get lawn and I want to set the resulting plants free there? Thank you all for your suggestions, and sorry for responding a bit late!