The process of rooting roses is anything but a SURE thing. Even if everything comes together perfectly, it's still up to Mother Nature to provide the conditions necessary for a piece of a rose stem to produce roots and become a new plant. I am always looking for ways to improve my odds.
There is a rosarian and rose breeder that I respect who is promoting a new way of propagating that seems to show great promise. (You can read about it and see his photos on his blog HERE.) The whole idea is to jump-start callousing and rooting by wrapping the prepared cuttings in damp newspaper and letting them sit in cool indoor conditions for two weeks. I'm intrigued, and I'm giving it a try.
I am taking my cuttings as I usually do, except with this method I removed all of the leaves from the cuttings. The leaves could be a source of rot while the cuttings are wrapped up ... and rotting is the NOT the objective here.
Here are 20 bundles of cuttings, standing in a couple of inches of water in my trusty dollar-store bucket.
The first thing I like about this method is that, because there is no potting soil involved at this point, I can work with the cuttings in the kitchen. I am usually sitting outside with little pots of soil, preparing cuttings at a table in the shade.
Each variety of rose is bundled with a tag and held with a rubberband.
I use an exacto knife to shave small slices off each side of the bottom part of the cutting. This reminds me of carefully peeling asparagus. I immediately dip the cutting into rooting hormone ... my choice of rooting hormone right now is Hormodin #2.
Notice how the tag is still with the cuttings.
When I have sliced and dipped every cutting in a bundle, I wrap the cuttings and their tag in damp newspaper. (If I lose the tag, the cuttings are worthless.) The resulting packet looks a lot like a burrito.
Here is a pile of packets stacked in the sink.
The packets go into a gallon zipper bag, marked with today's date, and the bag is now sitting on the mantel in the game room in our basement. My instructions say to keep the packets in a place where the temperature stays in the 60s ... and our basement is the place.
This is one of four bags of packets that I have produced over the past two days, with 70 varieties so far.
I'm now supposed to leave the packets alone for two weeks. During that time, the cuttings are supposed to callous (a precursor to rooting) and some of them may even begin to make tiny roots. I don't know if I have the courage to risk ALL of my cuttings on a new process like this. As of now, I will let the cuttings rest in their packets for a couple of days ... then I think I will pot up half of them and put them on the mist table in the greenhouse.
I will post updates and photos at each stage of this experiment. I can't wait to see what happens.