I have two roses that I’m ready to send to our trial grounds in South Australia. A local rose producers said to me send your roses to trial and if they do well we’d be more than happy to produce them. So… I’m trying to work out the best way to do it. They are wich-shrubs and so they grow well on their own roots. They just aren’t as rampant as a grafted plant (though I don’t know how they would do in specially prepared trial ground beds pumped full of fertilisers in a warmer climate either). Do you think it would be better to graft them for the trial plants or stick to my own-root philosophy and send them three-year-old own-roots intead (which I started preparing last summer)? I’ve never grafted these roses so I don’t know how they will perform on a vigorous root-stock. One of them is faily vigorous itself and would probably perform just as well own-root as grafted though most places here only produce grafted stock. I really want to stick to my guns but feel I will be at a disadvantage if I do… any advice very welcome.
Stick to own root, the producers will know soon enough if it is to their advantage to graft. IMO.
Neil
I don’t know what the local preferences are in OZ, but here in the US grafting is becoming less and less common. In the not-too-distant future it will probably be used only for those varieties that are hard to root, sucker a lot, or do not grow well on their own roots–or for those new varieties for which the producers don’t yet have enough stock to propagate many plants from cuttings.
If your roses root easily and grow well on their own roots I don’t see how you can go wrong with the own-root approach.
Simon as you know the rose growing culture here is NOTHING like USA.
In my opinion, find out what the other competitors are submitting to the trial grounds (budded or otherwise), and do the same.
I think George’s advice is golden. Unless there are introducers there who wish to alter the status quo, your breaking new ground will likely be seen as a problem. Why hamstring your offerings by submitting own root which may be slower to mature than budded when all the others are budded? Going forward, own root production might be something to discuss for the future, but if they don’t see it as broken, why try to prematurely try to fix it?
This is the problem. Most the growers in Australia produce grafted roses. The only one that produces ANY cutting grown roses that I am aware of is Ross Roses. I know Hedgerow use to but I don’t even know of they are in business anymore. There are groups out there that are wholesale plant producers who do produce cutting grown minis for the dept stores and Tesselars produce cutting grown Flower Carpet roses etc. I think it would be a hard sell, at the moment, to get cutting grown roses accepted by the major producers.
When I asked the secretary of the Australian Trial Grounds if I could submitt cutting grown plants he sounded shocked… almost taken aback as though the concept was totally foreign to him. The other thing that concerns is me that plants are compared against each other on an equal basis and they expect a plant to take off once put in the ground like grafted roses do when often a cutting grown rose requires some time to establish first. I was advised to send 2-3 year old plants so that they did just this. Ther criteria for vigour are set by grafted rose behaviour. One of the roses I want to send could possibly do just as well… but the other one (and possibly another as well) take longer to build… which they do nicely but not at the same rate as a big grafted rose.
So I don’t know what to do really. The place that said they’d produce my roses if they did well at trial only produce grafted roses and honestly I don’t see them changing in the near future. I want to send them to trial as own-roots because that’s what I select for but I don’t think it’s a level playing field and I think the assessment criteria are stacked against own-roots. One of the thing that I like in them is the way they build more slowly… they aren’t multiflora or big HT but they aren’t minis either. They are more groundcovers and even the ground covers are produced in a grafted form here in most cases.
Is there any way, culturally, to get own-roots pumping as hard as something grafted onto something like multiflora.
find out what the other competitors are submitting to the trial grounds (budded or otherwise), and do the same.
That’s the other problem… I’ve NEVER done something just because someone else is doing it…
I understand not wanting to do what all others do simply because they do it that way, but, how important is it to you for these roses to enjoy a level playing field?
You state all the others provide budded roses. You state one of your three roses might perform comparatively to budded as an own root plant, but the other two probably won’t. That should make this choice a no brainer. Providing own root plants to trials which predominantly receive budded plants is dooming yourself to probable failure. If you enjoy shooting yourself in the foot, send them own roots. Otherwise, if you want to play in their game, do it by their rules, whether you like it or not, or get ready to probably waste your time, money and plants by sending unsuitable material.
I believe you are wise to be selecting for own root suitability. You are probably rather ahead of the curve and that is laudible. History is full of “improvements” which satisfied problems people didn’t even realize were problems. Most of them were, and still are, termed “failures” because they failed to sell until they disappeared. In the US, you could buy cars capable of 30 mpg all the way through the mid to late 1960s. Who cared? Gas was cheap and what sold was speed. There are dozens of makes and models which delivered solutions to future issue well ahead of those issues being important. All went the way of the dinosaurs.
Dancing to their tune and providing them your own root selections as budded plants provides you potentially better chances of success than those who only select for budding suitability. Yours may well prove easier to produce as they are likely more vigorous, vital types than those which require artifical root stock vigor. Once your name and roses are more well known, more marketable, you should have your clout to fix what you see as broken. But, until then, I would think your best chance of achieving that status is going to come from playing by their rules, until you have the power to change them.
I’ve NEVER done something just because someone else is doing it…
Neither have I, however the goal here is specifically not to do with that topic…It seems more to do with giving your roses equal chance for the selection process, so going with the flow is not hypocritical either in the case you are an own-root advocate.
Also, if yours wins some prize and gets into commerce from its performance as non-budded in the trial bed, it might then be mass produced budded and this may create enough difference in the budded plants (compared to the trialed own root version) to create discernible differences in plant habit, which may or may not matter to those down that chain of commerce, including the gardening public.
I guess there is always some element of danger when we rock the boat too much, at least that is how I see it.
You are entitled to have your own opinions of course.
:O)
…oh and by the way, congratulations for getting this far in this process, I hope you win lotsa prizes !
Simon, talk to Laurie Newman, he might be able to help
You’re probably right… I still feel like a sellout… but I do want to give this a run and see how far I get… budded it is then!
Simon, I guess there is a cost involved, can both forms be submitted, own root and budded.
I still feel like a sellout…
Ohhhhh don’t, just GO FOR IT, and have lotsa fun while ur at it.
Please let us know how it goes !
How exciting…
:O)
Dave, there is a fee… can’t remember what it is though. You need to enter multiples of each variety (HT and Floribunda = 4 plants, Shrub Style, including Hybrid Musk, Rugosa Etc and Ground Cover = 3 plants, Mini and patio = 6 plants, and climbers = 2 plants) and you pay per variety entered.
Sending the roses in for someone else to judge if they are good enough is “selling out”, too. Just bud them, send them in and get ready to sit back, feeling like a “sell out” all the way to the bank!
So, what’s the average gain for a sell out in roses?
Actually, I don’t think I like the direction this thread is taking. Thankyou for the suggestions above.
Hi Simon,
I agree that grafted is less desirable, but probably necessary in this case to level the playing field - best wishes!
I wonder if they have rules regulating the rootstocks (e.g types) permitted for use for such trial plants.
Many years ago without telling it I entered strong own root roses in four international trials.
Got two merit certificates.