rose cutting

My friend Annemarie, told me this rose was easy to root. Apparently her mother just took stems of it and planted it in the ground in Louisiana, and soon the plants were taking up the entire yard. But in my climate, this rose struggled through the winter in a pot of rich fluffy potting mix in my unheated garage, and almost died. Outside in the warmer weather it didn't do much better and large stems just turned brown. There were a couple of stumps of stems left when I stuffed it in the ground waiting for it to die. But it took off, and it looked like this in August. Being a Louisiana girl, I'm not expecting her to survive the winter.

Since Annemarie told me that the cut flowers that she gave friends grew roots in their vases, I did just that. A cutting formed a callous in a few weeks. I planted it in good potting mix, and the leaves promptly yellowed and fell off. I decided to try again.

I took a just-bloomed stem, dusted the bottom with Rootone, and jabbed the cutting into a pot of straight perlite. I placed that into another pot, and filled it half way with bottled water. I sat it in a sunny window and every so often checked to make sure the water was half full.

Three weeks later the cutting was looking mighty perky, although no new leaves.  I lifted the pot.

Eureka! When I lifted the cutting, there was a big clump of roots! I potted it in the grittiest stuff I could get out of the garden. We'll see if it survives the winter.