I’ve had generous offers of plant material from several of you and since I’ve not had much luck rooting cuttings I thought I’d try my hand at bud grafting. I have an OP seedling of L83 that I’m pretty sure is once blooming. It bloomed last year for the first time and only once. If it is once blooming it’s of no use to me. It has a few suckers that are completely thorn-less (or nearly so) and I was wondering if using some of these suckers as root stock would be OK. I also have quite a few OP seeds of L83 in the fridge and could use some of the culled ones as well if this would be wise option. Or, should I be sticking to the usual root stock? Thanks!
Hi Rob…Why not?!
Just make sure you cut away and establish as separate plants all the suckers you intend to use as rootstock from the main plant before you do any of the budding.
By doing this, you eliminate any chance of spreading an infection (virus) from budwood to the rest of the suckers you intend to use as rootstock.
Thank you George for the suggestion. I wouldn’t have even thought about that.
Rob
Rob,
I finally did a Word document on how I do my cuttings. I basically take semihardwood cuttings in the fall and they are well rooted by spring. I have about a hundred roses or more and the majority were done from cuttings taken from a rose society member’s garden. It is very easy; though down side is you do them in the fall and they are ready in the spring (with no work in between- I call it the Lazy Man’s rooting method). I presently live in Richmond, VA though expect to be moving back to Long Island, NY this coming year (after I sell the house.) We are 7A zonewise here. Have been doing this since Oct 2001 and the first year I went to a talk the above mentioned rose member gave. He said we could take cuttings from his garden and I took about 10; I had 100% success and was hooked.
I don’t know if the email on here is working( never seems to work for me) so here is my email. If you are interested I shall try to send it to you via email (need yours) and if not successful, will print it out and mail it. I think you live in PA. Actually, my sister brought some cuttings of Austin’s Heritage one Christmas and I rooted them snow and all. It is basically the jar/plastic bottle method and I put the cuttings directly into the ground. This year, since I am moving, I put small pots in the ground, filled them with earth, and proceeded as usual. They are rooting nicely. Did this since I can quickly take up the plant and pot together with minimal transplant shock though my mentor and another rose friend used the pots in the ground method regularly. Prefer the ground direct since less need to worry about
Jim
jprov at comcast period net
Hi Jim P. That sounds great too, I would have to agree with you too on the tangent you seem to be steering this thread with the topic of rooting cuttings/rootstocks or both!!
Rob, although I myself love budding many types of unpatented plants, for roses I personally think these days, unless there is a real good reason to bud/graft (eg. the varietal is extremely difficult to root, or is a poor grower on its own roots and you want to have it grow vigorously - for whatever reason), there is every good reason to just strike rose cuttings as rooted cuttings (assuming they are unpatented selections, of course!!!).
Yes, I hear and respect what you say that you have had bad luck with striking some roses in the past, but maybe there are easier ways to do it, out there??
Budding/grafting in general has its own set of problems, including compatibility issues, possibility of rootstock having infection, rootstock performance in your local soil/climate, getting the budwood to root, getting the budwood to the correct stage of maturity/thickness to be able to readily accept buds optimally, and then there ar all the various technical aspects of mastering the “art” of budding, and then learning to apply the various types of budding, according to cambium flows at the time of the budding… (eg. T-budding, chip budding)…it all takes a whole lot of time to learn!!
Budding is a great tool to learn, yes it sure can be great fun, and if that is your primary goal, then yeah, go for it!!!
But having said that, I too would also like to provide you with some ideas on striking rose cuttings…there are miriad methods of doing this, this is just one way I like to do myself, which I persoanlly find very simple and usually fairly effective, as long as you select healthy wood:
Pick and choose!!
Link: www.rosehybridizers.org/forum/message.php?topid=31884#31884
George,
Thanks for the thumbs up! By the way, if anyone wants my method just email me, address above. The advantage is that you do them in the fall, forget about them all winter letting nature do all the work, and then come spring they are ready to be potted up and are nice small plants. I have had some bloom under their jars in March or early April (reverse the seasons for the southern hemisphere). I am going to take some pics of my “bottled roses” this morning. My Teasing Georgia’s which I “stuck” in mid October got so tall I had to put ‘extensions’ on the bottles since I didn’t want the main stem to bend.
You recall that old say,“nature and life is always showing us things, only we need the eyes to see and the intelligence to process what she is trying to show us”… think of the microwave oven, pyrex glass cooking ware etc. Well, about 10 years ago, I was moving to California in July (mid summer) from New York and I had an unidentified spring blooming rambler which I wanted to take with me. So I took some cuttings, wrapped them in a dampened paper towel, put them in a baggy and took them. When I got to CA, I put them in the refrigerator and forgot about them with all I had to do: unpacking,job hunting, finding my way around. Well, about a month or so later, I was poking around the refrigerator and there was this package. When I opened it, the cuttings were as fresh as could be, the leaves still a healthy green, etc. At the base of the cuttings were these 1 cm. long white “ugly” growths. I planted the cuttings out in soil but they all died. Of course, that was a nice well formed callus and I was totally ignorant of what it was at that time. It was George’s method. It was a year or so later via the internet that I learned from Malcolm Manners website about callus formation and this past year George’s method which is a wonderful way of taking last minute cuttings if one is moving.
I think budding is a wonderful technique also which I still have to try. Another good reason for budding is that with some of the OGRs which sucker like crazy, it is a good way of keeping them in bounds. I recently offered a neighbor in NY a rooted William Baffin but when she heard it suckers, she refused it. I have some thornless multiflora which I rooted so will be moving that along to NY with me. Fortunately I did some cuttings of it since a few years later, I lost the mother plant to RoseRosetteDisease.
As they say,it’s all good. Now to do some seed sowing on Christmas Day and see if I can keep damping off (my old enemy) at bay.
Jim
George,
You make some very valid points that I hadn’t considered when toying with the idea of bud grafting. It’s something I should learn and will give it a try but maybe I’d be better off sticking with finding a rooting method that will work for me. Thank you for providing the link to your method.
Jim,
I sent you an email requesting a copy of your method as well. I’m hoping that between the two I will have some success with rooting next season.
Kim has a few that I’d love to get plant material from and try my luck with those. Have a great holiday all!
Rob
Rob,
I’ve always had terrible luck with rooting too but I think I can vouch for both Jim’s and George’s methods. I actually posted a picture on that link George gave showing how well that method is working for me - one’s even rooting already, in the newspaper.
I’ve also got cuttings of Mutabilis and that same rose that I stuck in the ground back in October or November. I was inspired to try by an old post I had copied and pasted and printed out years ago, where Jim had described what worked for him. I can’t see the root end of these ones, but I’m betting they’re doing their thing, since the tops still look so good.
If I were you, I’d listen to these guys and give rooting another try.
If I can do it, anyone can ;0)
Good luck, Tom
Tom,
Thanks for the encouragement! I’m definitely going to give both methods a shot.
Rob
I’d like to correct some erros in a passage I wrote further up, this is what I really intended to write:
Budding/grafting in general has its own set of problems, including compatibility issues, possibility of rootstock having infection, rootstock performance in your local soil/climate, getting the rootstock to root, getting the rootstock to the correct stage of maturity/thickness to be able to readily accept buds optimally, and then there are all the various technical aspects of mastering the “art” of budding, and then learning to apply the various types of budding, according to cambium flows at the time of the budding… (eg. T-budding versus chip budding)…it all takes a whole lot of time to learn!!.