Rose Gardening in the Basement

I have a set of metal shelves, fitted with fluorescent lights, in one corner of my basement workshop that I use for growing my fall rose cuttings through the winter.  Today was the day that I took the baby cuttings from their milk-jug propagation containers and planted them into little pots of their own.  I knew that the cuttings were ready because nice strong roots were showing through the container and most of them are growing leaves.

I usually stick as many as four cuttings in a pot.  Dividing and repotting the cuttings after they are rooted is a delicate operation.  First, I tip the contents of the pot into my hand.  Then I tease the baby plants apart, trying to break as few roots as possible.

Lovely roots!

I do what I can to keep good records, and this includes legible labels on each cutting ... I use pieces of cheap mini blind slats, written in pencil.  The rose in the photo below is on the Haxall lot at Hollywood Cemetery.  The dates on the label indicate the day that the cutting was planted (10-29-14) and when it was put into its own pot (2-11-15).

After a full morning's work, I ended up with 68 baby roses in individual pots.

Most of these roses are from cuttings that I took at the Leonie Bell Noisette Garden at Monticello's Tufton Farm ... "Ruth's Wavy Leafed Noisette", "Aunt Louisa's Rose", "Lingo Musk", 'Single Pink China', 'Smith's Yellow Noisette', and others.  (The post from the day I took the cuttings is HERE.)

I am especially pleased to have had success with nine cuttings of the Haxall rose.  It's an unknown Hybrid China rose, a very old plant, and it has Rose Rosette Disease and will have to be removed.  These cuttings were taken from a part of the plant without infected growth, an attempt to clone the original ... and having so many on hand it makes the idea of losing the mother plant a little bit easier to bear.

It feels good to be around green, growing, live things when it's so cold and everything in the garden outside is asleep till spring.  

The tutorial to show you, step by step, the method I use to root roses this way is HERE.