Rooting for Success! Part 3

Well, I can't believe it. Luckily, I was lazy about throwing my rose cuttings in the compost bin! I went out on my porch and noticed that one of them is still alive. It's the one in the cruddy dirt! (All dirt is cruddy, but by cruddy here I mean not expensive and special.)

Those white fungi = roots!

I think I'm going to leave it alone just like I had been doing. I hadn't looked at it in about 2 weeks since I had final exams and papers to write. That thing just grew all by itself. I'll post pictures some time soon!

Clearly the best thing to do is this: Stay out of nature's way!

"Rooting" for success! Part 2

As expected, all of the rose cuttings I took a few weeks ago have died. They seemed to turn black from the soil line and rot from there.

After the first one died, I tried changing out the soil on the remaining healthy cuttings. I kept it moist but not quite as moist as I had before. This only delayed the inevitable. The last cutting that hung on was in the soil that I'd initially thought to be the worst. That is, while four of the cuttings were placed in a nice seed starting soil (the bag said it would optimize root growth) this last one was placed in a rather clumpy cheap potting soil that had some pieces of wood in it. I thought it would die first, but it died last and differently from the others.

Instead of turning black, it softened from the base and some small off-white fungi grew along the stem.

I'm going to try this experiment again, but this time I'm going to use two different kinds of roses and put them directly in the ground with a bell jar over them as described in the article I linked to in my last post. Right now, things here in Ohio are very dry and very hot, so I don't think conditions are optimal.

I do have two roses getting ready to bloom that should have stalks ready for an attempt in a few weeks. Oh, boy!

As a side note:
You know, after this super wet spring I've had more trouble with fungi than ever before! I wonder how many others out there are having the same problems. I don't want to spray fungicide. All of my hollyhocks were decimated by rust. (I've read it's not supposed to affect the blooms...but it sure did! After a good start, the blooms stopped opening.) I tried cutting out the affected leaves but it kept getting ahead of me. My peony didn't bloom this year and research showed that it was affected by a fungal disease called botrytis blight, so I plan to dig it up and thoroughly clean out the area this fall. Hopefully that will work because I love peonies, and missed it so much!

My beautiful black hollyhocks before the rust overtook them.

These are supposedly what Thomas Jefferson grew at Monticello.

One thing doing really really well: coneflowers. Those look fabulous this year. I think I want some more and in different colors. I already have them in three different flowerbeds. They're just so great! They've shown no signs of distress and I've barely touched them. They're doing well in half sun locations and in a mostly shady location. *swoon*

My coneflowers: 2011 saviors of my garden.

"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!