I buy in bare root roses from Conard-Pyle and Bailey Nurseries to sell retail. The only two I sell that are budded are Harison’s Yellow and Persian Yellow. I don’t know what rootstock they use, but I always tell people to plant them really deep in case the rootstock is not as hardy as the top.
I just realized that one of the only ways I could offer roses such as Prairie Peace and Hazeldean to my customers would be if I budded them. If there was a super-hardy rootstock, they could maybe plant them with the graft at ground level to eliminate the suckering tendencies of those roses.
Ideally it would be low-thorn, non-suckering of course, and easily grown from seed.
Prairie Peace and Hazeldean can’t be produced own root, or are you looking at the greater lead time or smaller plants for own root? I haven’t grown either and neither is really suitable for my climate, which is why I’m asking.
Actually, Kim, they can be, but budding is a lot more cost-effective.
Multiflora is an OK rootstock. You might get in touch with Pickering re. use of multiflora. But don’t mention the problems recently caused Pickering by an underling of low understanding in one of the plant inspection services.
Griffith Buck developed some super-hardy multiflora rootstock for Iowa winters. It’s probably hardy in MN. It’s still around. You’d need to root de-eyed cuttings and avoid getting virus into your mother stock of these rootstocks.
Hortico uses R.mutliflora, R. rubiginosa and R.canina rootstock on their roses. The R.mulitflora might not be hardy enough for your area but I suspect the other two would be for rootstock anyway. I have a Henri Martin I got from them years ago and while I’m not sure what the rootstock is, I noticed last year it had sent up suckers. I trimmed most of them out last fall but I missed one and it only had tip damage this spring. While it wasn’t as cold as usual this past winter, I’ve had HM for years and I’ve hadn’t had any problem with the rootstock.
Personally, I would NOT use anything developed by Buck unless it has specifically gone through the RMV treatment process. MOST of his varieties passed through Roses of Yesterday and Today and they were notorious for their RMV issues. Plants he handed out to people at Iowa State show RMV. There was little concern for it in those days as the rates of infection demonstrated. At least with seedling multiflora, your chances are a bit better.
I’d imagine that R glauca would be worth exploring as a rootstock. It should be hardy enough for your climate, it’s pretty much thornless, and I haven’t noticed any suckering on the plant I have.
I have done very little with alternative rootstocks, but many years ago I put Prairie Star on Therese Bugnet. It was fine, and no suckers though of course I had propagated from a sucker in the first place. That plant (TB) is not so great around here with no irrigation in severe drought conditions but most of my bushes get water through summer. It is relatively low thorn so easy enough to work with as a stock. On a good deep soil it will form a vigorous bush that doesn’t need water with our average 32 inch rain per year (had 10 or more of those bushes for 10 years). But it seems to not like the pre-emergent herbicides that neighbors use on their lawns.
Thanks everyone for the responses. Whatever my solution, it will have to be easy. We like to take the lazy path as much as possible. I’m leery of multiflora because we don’t have any native around here and it seems like that’s a good thing for avoiding rose rosette disease.
R. canina or rubiginosa sound possible. I don’t have either. Do they not sucker? I have a R. glauca, but have seen a sucker or two. I could start some seedlings. I think I have a few smaller rooted cuttings of Therese Bugnet around, and I suppose I could practice budding on that. Therese is strange in that it has both thornless and very thorny canes.
I’m assuming that the budding process would be similar to that of apples.
Propagating with cuttings will always be ideal if it can be done. Last year or the year before I got ambitious and tried creating a propagation chamber…a pallet box setup with T5 lights, reflective mylar on the sides, an ultrasonic humidifier, and even an air conditioner mounted on the side to keep the temps down. Way too fancy and I didn’t get it to work with the spinosissimas that I tried.
Persistence and a focused intent are the only essential tools to acquire.
[quote=“Univ. of Illinois extension service[/url]advises”]
Identification of rose viruses and viruslike agents can be confirmed only through (a) several
serological techniques performed by trained virologists in a well-equipped laboratory and (b) budding onto such indicator plants as virus-free ‘Shirofugen’ flowering cherry (common and yellow mosaics), Rosa multiflora ‘Burr’ (rose ring pattern and rose spring dwarf), and rose cultivars that include ‘Queen Elizabeth’ and ‘Madame Butterfly’ (rose leaf curl).
[/quote]
If any virus guru wants to test these for virus, I’m willing to supply cuttings. I’ve done the best I can to keep them clean over the years.
The reason I thought of Rosa pomifera is because it is highly similar to Rosa canina, and is a caninae type like rubiginosa is, but it is much smoother, and way less likely to sucker than any of the other caninae types. I think someone should run an experiment with this species as a hardy root stock.
I am assuming that you tried to root the spinossissimas in your ‘propagation chamber’, and it is not that the chamber did not work, but rather I understand that spins are very hard if not impossible to root except by layering. So this may not have been a failure but a learning process. Correct me if I am wrong about the difficulty of rooting this class. I think I remember reading about this here or on the Garden Web.
You might want to consider one of the Parkland or Explorer roses that are no longer protected by patent. They all root easily from cuttings and most of them should be root and crown hardy where you are.
Here is the link to the Canadian CFIA site. You would need to check registration and patent expiration in the U.S.
For example ‘Assiniboine’ is half R. arkansana. It is partially cane hardy in Alberta and mine doesn’t sucker (so far).
I have a thornless R. canina from a friend and since it selfs easily, it may be a good option to get more thornless super hardy plants. I can share hips with you in the fall if you’d like. If you were willing to root cuttings, Robert Smith from South Dakota loved using Lilian Gibson as his hardy rootstock.
I got a plant of Lillian last spring at one of those disreputable big box places and found the cuttings very easy to root in late summer. That’s one I was considering suggesting as a rootstock also. It grow to enormous size bush in Topeka rose garden.
hi Kim, Most of us in the north have got our Prairie Peace and Hazeldean as suckers from one another or as layers. As you may know they sucker very aggressively. Have had Hazeldean on multiflora from Pickering and it was never happy.
Has anyone tried to take root cutting from roses like Prairie Peace and Hazeldean. Maybe that would be the most cost efficient way. Or maybe one could just whack the whole plant to the ground like certain apple tree root stock before the age of tissue culture and just dig up the resulting shoots latter in the season.
I wonder if anyone has ever tried to breed a hardier rootstock out of Ross Rambler.