"Rooting" for Success!

As I mentioned earlier, I love roses. They're a challenge to grow and I love how they smell. (Well, some of them are a challenge. Some of them grow like weeds.)

Just Joey Hybrid Rose

My favorite rose in my garden is my Just Joey rose. It has a sweet fruity fragrance and an ethereal apricot glow. Every spring as the thick blanket of snow recedes, I poke around the bush looking for evidence of life. It greets me as little swollen red protuberances on the rose's stem. It occured to me this year, after a particularly hard, cold winter, that the rose may not return every year. Some day, maybe next April, after removing the snow and sheltering leaves, I may uncover a dead plant; a bit of scrap for the compost bin.

Well, a summer without Just Joey...I dare not think about it!

That's when I heard about rooting cuttings from roses. Every place I consulted said a cultivar should be more than 20 years old to be legally rooted from a cutting. The lovely Just Joey was first introduced in 1972.

My initial source is the website located here. Now, I didn't read the directions very well. Basically I just read the word "mason jar," looked at the pictures and went for it. My steps were as follows:

1. I waited for the first roses of the summer to bloom and fade.

2. When they started to look a faded with some petals falling off, I watered them a whole lot at night.

3. I took the cuttings in the morning when the plant would be most hydrated.

4. I did follow the directions in that I cut below some leaves and wounded the stem a little bit.

5. Immediately let the cuttings float in a large bowl of water and took my mason jars full of seed starting dirt. I poked holes in the dirt with a pencil.

6. Next, I dipped the cut ends of the cuttings in rooting hormone and gently put them in the pre-made holes.

7. Finally, I over-watered them and put a sandwich bag over each mason jar with a cutting to keep the humidity in.

8. I have misted them every day for two and a half weeks now.

My initial cuttings looked like this:

I made a total of five cuttings. Two of them I watered less, and one is in this really lumpy potting soil with a lot of pieces of bark because I ran out of the seed starting stuff. One has died of some sort of mold infection. It was one of the ones I over-watered. (You can see some evidence of my over-watering in the jar closest to the camera.)

I repotted the others two that were over-watered in some dry soil. Some of the leaves had turned yellow and I cut those off, but they are, thus far, alive. When I repotted them I didn't see any roots yet even though one shows signs that it may put out growth soon. I reapplied rooting hormone and returned them to their jars with new, dry soil. I'm trying to leave them alone this time, because it's possible that I was loving them to death.

This experiment may be a failure, but it has been fun. I'll keep you posted!