The subject of today's demonstration is a plant that I rooted from cuttings of a rose in the Historic Sacramento City Cemetery, thought to have been brought to California from Virginia. I call it "Unknown China from Virginia". Whatever it is, with its Virginia connection, I asked and was given permission to take cuttings, in order to take this rose back 'home'.
I planted this rose in the expanded section of my Rambler Garden, along with nine other roses that had lived in their little pots for WAY too long. This is what I did:
1. Marked the location, and swept back the existing mulch to expose the landscape fabric liner on this garden.
3. Dig a hole the same depth as the pot and twice as wide, carefully tip the rose out of its pot, place it in the hole and put the soil back into the hole around it.
4. Weeds are such an awful problem for me. To help suppress them, I cover the opening in the landscape fabric with a good layer of newspaper, tucked underneath the landscape fabric.
5. Carefully put the mulch back around the new plant, covering the newspaper without piling it around the stem.
6. For little guys like this, I add a cage of hardware cloth or chicken wire so the rabbits can't get to it. I will remove the cage once the rose is a little bigger and no longer in danger of being eaten to the ground.
That's it! A ten-minute job, at the most. It takes a little bit longer if I have to dig a bigger hole to accommodate a larger plant, but it's still not a huge ordeal. All that's left to do for this rose is to make sure that I keep it adequately watered.
(I can't wait to show you this little guy later this spring, as he gets bigger and fills in the space! As soon as he produces a flower, you will be the first ones to know.)
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Want to learn how to root your own roses from cuttings? This is the method that I use.
Hartwood Roses: How to Root Roses from Cuttings
