Pre-callousing cuttings...

Depends how big the callouses are. You want callous to be big, knobbly and fat like they are about to burst into roots at any stage. I had 100% success with these ones but should make mention that "Temple Bells" is a wichurana hybrid and so, like many wichurana hybrids, it strikes very easily at the best of times. Cuttings arrived today from Margaret ('Lady Hillingdon', 'Ten Thousand Lights', "Pompom Red China", Slater's Crimson China', and 'Parson's Pink China) and I've wrapped these up the same way... these are a better test so I'll document this as well.

Dave is the callous all the way around the bottom of the cutting?. Are they rose cuttings or rootstock? and if they are ready to pot up have you got somewhere to keep them warm?

Yes Dave, the callous is all the way around.
Rose cuttings of an unknown OGR, maybe La Reine Victoria
Yes can keep them warm

If you have not potted them up at the time of this post I would give them a go, this way as the roots start you will not disturb them or break any off.

Thanks David. Will do. Hope you're getting some of this rain.

38mm for the 2 days and they are saying heaps over Friday night thru to Monday, at this time of year I think it is good to get any amount so we start of a good spring.

Simon, how did you want to use it for breeding? What seed parents?

I could possibly do a few crosses here for you if I have the right hip producers.

My rose list is on HMF under nurseries, Glenorie Roses. Some plants listed are not mature enough to produce hips yet. Have Don Juan, Lady Mann and a few other Alister Clarks which are noteable breeders. I also have a lot of just budded Australian HT's that do not appear on this list as yet. Do have two (2) David Austins remaining from 20 odd bushes that were culled due to poor performance in our climate. These are buff coloured and great hip producers, should be fertile.
Would send you Fortuniana pollen if it would last during the shipping delay.

Not sure which one you are referring to Bruce? I have many plants I want to use for breeding?

Simon , we had better look at sending pollen. Last year had about 50 blooms on Fortuniana.

The two DA's are Grace and Heritage.

Those cuttings will not produce blooms for two to three years, by that time you could have seedlings from my pollen.

The choice is yours.

There has been a lot posted re callousing cuttings, is it essential to have it 2mm thick on the bottom of the cutting? My experience with it is that sometimes a lot of callousing still doesn't make roots. My local expert where I go for the best advice suggests just starting the process is best. He always places Multiflora cuttings under wet hessian bags for 7 days, then plants them out in the field. The more difficult Fortuniana to root due mainly to Damping Off possibly needs the fungus removed by placing in a solution of 1 mil of Milton to 1 litre of water for 3 to 5 minutes maximum.
Then plant in coconut fibre moistened with a solution of 5mil of 3% Hydrogen Peroxide to 80 mil of water.
I don't like peat as it comes from the ground and is full of all the things we don't want to come in contact with struggling plant cuttings. Add a little warmth like 25 to 28 degrees C to the bottom and success should be commercially viable. Would also suggest a clear cover to keep in moisture and let in light. Coconut fibre works well as it lets oxygen into the root area and doesn't allow water to pool up.

Bruce, I'm still not sure what you are referring to??? I have Heritage growing here but have no real plans to use it in breeding and I'm not after Gracie. I don't have any plans to use Fortuniana because it is reportedly sterile. What are you referring to Bruce?

Must be suffering from poor powers of observation and memory loss.

I remember now with your prompting Fortuniana is sterile.

Lost my first cousin during the week who was 2 years older than me so it has come as a bit of a shock. Am having a bit of trouble concentrating for we spent quite an amount of time together earlier in our lives.

I apologise for my bluntness as well Bruce... please accept my condolences...

Have been reading these posts with interest .
Is there any more progress to report on the state of the different cuttings ?
It's not something that I have tried on a serious level , It's usually bits that get broken off that I poke in a pot and hope for the best . However I need to brush up on my technique as there are a few folk I know that have their hands up for a plant of The Little Girl's Rose now.

Two questions for the time being .
Does the time of the year matter when taking the cuttings ? In the past I have planted up likely looking pieces that I have salvaged when pruning and potted them up. Pruning time is winter time and the rose bushes are all nye -nyes [or they should be] . So the cuttings sit there and sit there , yep callousing beautifully and even bursting into leaf in the spring and then slowly carking it. When tipped out of the pot you have a calloused stem but no roots . I was wondering if cuttings taken in the warmer months when the roses are actively growing wouldn't have a higher success rate .

Does having bottom heat help improve the strike rate or at least hurry it up a bit ? Have got a couple of heat mats that I could use but not sure whether the rose cuttings like that sort of thing.

Fortuneana . LOL I know that one well . Touted over here as being THE understock for W.A conditions . In the sandy coastal plain , it's the one that gets it's roots down well . REALLY well. I had to dig an old bush out once , a bush where the scion had died and the stock had taken over . It was a mammoth job . My initial plan had been to transplant it elsewhere but after having been ripped to shreds [it has vicious thorns] and digging an enormous hole all the while chopping at roots and levering with the garden fork , I ended up taking to it with the axe and chopping it out any old way I could . Took me nearly a week to get it out. One thing though , once it's out , it's gone . Not like Dr Huey who will shoot away from root pieces left behind .
All the locally produced bushes are budded onto it and I find up here where we have heavier soil than the *flat landers* , that they are slower to get away and establish themselves whereas the E.S imports that are budded on to Dr Huey do a lot better .

Haven't tried anything grown on Multiflora [as far as I know] but I remember it being a dead loss [literally] for my mum up in Perth . She bought a lot of roses from the E.S in the early 70's and most of those were on Multiflora . They all struggled in the sand and a lot just gave up the ghost altogether .
Apologies for wandering off topic .

cheers. Rosalie

I can't remember if I've posted this before, but this is what I use in warm weather. Bruce suggests soaking the cuttings first in dilute Milton, to decrease the likelihood of fungal infection.
DOGGYBAG TECHNIQUE FOR STRIKING CUTTINGS IN WARM WEATHER. Modified from a technique developed in the US by Mike Shoup. For a variant of this see [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] In theory this works for any plant that doesn’t have furry leaves, but my main success has been with roses.

Cut the bottom corners (about 1cm) from a ziplock (food storage) bag - I use Coles’ 32 x 25cm or thereabouts. Put about 10cm depth of commercial seedling & cutting mix into the bag, or use a potting mix (I use Nu-earth premium) with a couple of handfuls of an aerator – Vermiculite or Perlite, or for a tenth of the cost, Coles’ basic kittylitter (NOT clumping). Water it till the mixture is wet through, then close the bag and leave it to drain for several hours.
The cuttings should be from a stem that has flowered, up to a pencil-size diameter (as an old-rose rescuer, I generally have to use much smaller bits.) Cut off the top bud. Take the leaves off the bottom 2 or 3 nodes (which will go into the potting mix), and keep the leaves on 2 or 3 upper nodes. Re-cut the stem obliquely a little below the lowest node, and dip it immediately into a rooting hormone or honey. Make a hole in the potting mix almost to the bottom of the bag, and put the cutting into the hole. A bag will take 3-4 cuttings. Put a label by each cutting, or write on the outside of the bag with a Garden Marker pen. Close the bag, and write the date on the outside of the bag where it is easily seen. (You can blow into the bag to plump it up.)
I put mine in groups standing in a cat-litter tray (from an el cheapo store), so they will support each other and are less likely to be knocked over. ( 3-5 per tray, depending on size.) A clear container is better, so you can see roots developing without moving the bags. It’s essential that the drainage holes aren’t blocked. They should be put where they will receive light but not direct sunlight. It’s important not to disturb the developing roots, but the bag can be opened from time to time to remove fallen leaves or flower buds (make sure it is sealed properly again afterwards). If you can’t see many droplets of moisture on the inside of the bag after a while, add a teaspoon or two of water, but this is rarely necessary.

When good roots are visible in the bottom of the bag (and not before), leave the bag unsealed for a few days to harden off the plant (it may need some water). Then it can be potted out, scooping out a handful of soil around the roots. (Loss rate from potting out is about 1 in 12 – higher if you take them out before the roots are fairly well-developed.) Tiny new leaves usually wilt straight away, and may be better removed. It will be top-heavy, and will need shelter from wind for some weeks. Introduce it gradually to sunlight over a couple of weeks. Feed weekly with dilute Seasol alternating with a diluted fertiliser containing trace elements, eg Phostrogen.
As a rough guide: for rambler roses, you can start looking for roots at 3- 4 weeks; for Tea roses from about 6 weeks. HTs, especially the yellows, are much slower and have a lower success rate. Polyanthas are easy. The Old European roses (spring-flowerers) are harder to strike – it’s easier to dig up a sucker if they’re growing on their own roots (but they will sucker if planted on their own roots in the garden, and may become invasive). I would never again grow rugosas or most species roses on their own roots.
This works well from about mid-November to the end of February (as starting date, in southern Australia). In autumn I get better results from in-ground cuttings.
The ziplock mechanism doesn’t last well enough to use the bag for a second batch.

All the cuttings in this thread have been potted on and very few have been lost. I use this method at any time of the year.. it just takes longer now. I'm still getting takes in as little as 3 weeks.

EDIT: Just noticed the bottom heat question... I don't use it. I stick the bags down next to a heated aquarium though so maybe they are warmer than if left elsewhere. Paul Barden tried this method (see here: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] after telling him about it and he placed it on top of his fridge where it is warmer. He's in the U.S. so Feb is still winter. On top of a hot water heater etc would be another good place (for indoor systems anyway).

Hi OzRose, Margaret and Simon are quite successiful with cuttings, Margarets system is used by many reporting very good results.

I callous my cuttings between two hessian bags that have been sprayed with the hose, then kept moist. Keep the bags with cuttings in a dark place and spray or sprinkle the bags every couple of days to make sure they are not drying out. Within two weeks callousing should have started enough showing the white ring as seen in the for mentioned pix.

Best of luck and enjoy your roses.

Having previously had a poor success rate with cuttings, I was inspired by this thread to give Simon's method a whirl. Took cuttings of Benjamin Britten on 4 August and of Christopher Marlowe on 11 August. (Pruning doesn't happen till August in the mountains for fear of late frosts - and even then we got snow right after I'd finished the job.) Unwrapped Ben Britten today after only three and a half weeks to find heaps of callousing! There were spots of mould developing on the newspaper but I hope I was in time. Potted the cuttings immediately, though not into a closed environment, like a soft drink bottle over the pot, because in the past, this has always led to my losing the cutting the second i try, no matter how carefully, to harden it off. They are in the open air but it is air with the warmth of early spring, so I am hoping for the best. Do you think I should have a peek at Chris Marlowe too or do you think it is just too soon?

I reckon CM has wichurana in it judging by the shape and sheen of the leaves. I have also found it strikes easily and grows well on its own roots. You won't hurt it to have a look. In fact I sometimes find it helps to unwrap it, let it breath a few minutes and then maybe even wrap it up in some fresh newspaper. It's important to note that they are not out of the woods yet once they form large callouses. I plant mine when the callouses are big and knobbley and then they seem to sit there for a while and do nothing. Then I start to lose some. I'm sure it is something like transplant shock. Some of them just start to shrivel and die. Not from the bottom like with a lot of cuttings... the stems just seem to whither and die. SO just keep an eye on them. For the faster rooting ones it is very successful and you don't usually lose any. But others can look like they are home and hosed and then all of a sudden they start to fail. I reckon if I had a heat tray I could avoid a lot of the troubles and get the roots out a lot quicker. I'm also wondering whether a quick dip in hormone liquid/powder might help at this stage to get the root formation thing happening faster and stronger. So many things to experiment with. I figure so long as I get at least one from a batch of cuttings then I'm ahead of the game Good luck with it Meryl

This is just the thread BillnDee and myself were looking for.

We both have a box full of cuttings that are well calloused in a soft moist mix of perlite, coir, propagating sand and vermiculite. They are growing leaves like mad....and we're both wondering what is the best move now.

Do we leave them in their mix and add some liquid nutrition to it?
or pot them up, remembering it's still quite cold here.

Or...do we leave them as they are, knowing that on previous occasions we have lost healthy looking cutting by doing that. On the other hand, I lost a whole batch that I planted out, after they'd grown roots and looked ready to rock 'n roll.

Also, I have a lot of cuttings that I stuck in the ground around parent plants in autumn. They are throwing leaves, calloused, but no roots.

When should I move these cuttings away from the parent plant ? I assume that if I leave them there too long, the bigger plant will take nutrition away from the cuttings. ( like "rose sick soil" syndrome).

BTW Simon, the Phylis Bide you gave me is flowering happily while growing up an old tree. She's beautiful. I love that colour blend. It stands out brightly from a distance too.

Also the cuttings that you sent via Dee are looking great. all have roots. If only I can keep them going.

The red groundcover cuttings that you gave me last year ( at Dee's place.) have grown into lovely little bushes, planted around Phylis Bide's feet.

I have just put in our 180th rose, so the addiction is progressing nicely. No sign of a cure on the horizon! I also have a greenhouse full of cuttings and potted on struck cuttings. In fact i think I'll go down there now and experiment with dipping a few heavily calloused cuttings into hormone gel before potting them up.

I am inspired and encouraged to read that even experts like Simon expect to lose cuttings along the way.

I am also very lucky to have BillnDee as my mentor and friend on this fascinating journey.

Eagerly awaiting advice from other forum members .......

How are those two? I haven't heard from them in ages

I'd leave them untilthey did have roots Abbi... Glad to hear your roses are doing so well... Tassie really is the rose capital of the world hey

Sure is.

This afternoon, I had a closer look and found that some of the cuttings did have roots, so i've potted them up.

As an experiment I've also re-dipped some really knobbly calloused ones in hormone gel and potted them, plus a few with no hormone gel as a control sample. All labelled. Others I've left in the box. Hedging bets.

Abbi, I've got a post-potting tip I've used with nearly 100% success.

After you have potted them up, let them stand in water+seasol for at least 12 hours in a cool place. (Actually, I've never lost anything after 24 hours standing in water). Then let them drain overnight (when it's cooler) for 12 hours and then next morning put them back in the seasol mix for another 12 hours. Repeat again if they look droopy. Avoids transplant shock etc and they never look back. I know it goes against the rules ( waterlogging,etc) but it works for me. Applies to anything you've just potted up. Good luck!

Great tip Simon

Re cuttings,Being new to the concept of Rose propagation,I too struggle with mixed success.
my wife however, who has really green thumbs,has had great success by throwing pieces of roses into a large tub of mouldy water,which lives outside,then 3 mths later they have extensive roots and she plants them amongst her natives.
Admitedly she uses ground cover and miniatures,but she makes it look easy.Her favourite is the miniature shrub...Queen mother,which is an excellent plant and we highly recommend it.Bomb proof and always in flower,trim with shears to shape.

wphvet, minatures are one of the easiest to strike. Do not wish to take away from your wifes success but give her some HT's and others to try.

I am sure everyone will be interested in her success.