Collecting and storing rose cuttings
- by Joe Cooper who gardens in San Antonio, TX.
Peaceful Habitation Roses is his web site.
From personal correspondence with Joe in February 2000.

Collecting, identifying, and sharing roses is great fun, and it is a very worthwhile thing to do. The whole focus is to collect and identify roses and assure that someone, somewhere, is propagating them and keeping them alive. My approach is always to be on the lookout for roses, and to always be prepared to ask for and take cuttings. When I am in the San Antonio area, I carry my clippers, baggies, etc., with me in the car. My rule of thumb, is- if it is a rose that I am not utterly sure that I already have, I ask for cuttings, root them, and plant them in a safe place in the display garden from which I can make more cuttings when needed. If it turns out to be a rose that I do not want, well, I can give it away and bless someone else. In all cases, I am very careful not to damage the original plant, and I always try to be a good citizen and good neighbor. There is just no point in having the animosity of the public rise up and prevent people like me from rescuing roses. So if you take cuttings from a plant that does not belong to you personally, please read and observe the Rules of Etiquette for Rose Rustlers and check the following Web Pages:
http://www.texas-rose-rustlers.com/etiquett.htm.

You will find a lot of material on making own-root cuttings on the Texas Rose Rustlers page: http://www.texas-rose-rustlers.com
http://www.texas-rose-rustlers.com/howtoask.htm

The tools of the trade include’ the following:

1. Good sharp clippers

2. Gallon-sized zip-lock bags

3. Paper towels

4. A pencil

5. 3x5 cards for identification

6. I recommend a notebook to keep records of where and when you found the rose, and

7. If you are really serious (like I am), take a good camera and get close-up pictures of each rose, its bloom, and its foliage. It usually takes 5-6 pictures to capture the details of a rose, and a macro-zoom lens let you get very sharp images at close range.

When you take cuttings, be sure to label them, using the pencil and 3x5 cards mentioned above. Use a pencil rather than a pen so the writing will not fade and run. There is a lot of information on the Texas Rose Rustler’s page on how to make cuttings. Please check the following Web Page: http://www.texas-rose-rustlers.com/ms-pp-ct.htm

How Make the Cuttings. The whole idea is to get fresh and promising cutting materials and then keep them moist until you can root the cuttings. That is the reason for the zip-lock bag and paper towels. The process seems complicated, but it is really very easy:

1. Select cutting material from new growth that is not too limber but not too old and stiff. The very young shoots are extremely tender and may well turn to mush when they are put in potting mix. Similarly, very old wood becomes harder and tougher (and less likely to make roots) with time. So part of the key to success is to start with the right material. I have been successful with tiny twigs, but it takes some doing because these tiny twigs do not have a lot of strength or stored-up nutrients to sustain them until the roots can form and grow. So it is really a little better to start with cutting material that is about the diameter of a #2 pencil and about 3” – 4” long. The ideal cutting material comes from a stem that diameter, that is topped with a spent flower. You see, when a flower appears at the terminal end of a stem, it is not possible for that stem to grow further that direction. Therefore, the flower sends a chemical messenger back down the shoot that activates all of the buds below it and encourages them to grow new branches and leaves. The same thing happens to a lesser degree when a shoot is pruned. This is why occasional light pruning can promote active growth in the plant. Since material in the leaf and stem buds is undifferentiated, it does not yet know whether it is supposed to be roots or leaves. Therefore, once the bud has been activated, the ones that find themselves underground are highly likely to make roots.

2. Cut off pieces about the diameter of a #2 pencil and about 3-4” long, with at lease 3 leaves, bit usually not more than 5 leaves. Cut the material off the parent plant with sharp clippers or a sharp knife.

3. Put the cuttings in the zip-lock bags.

4. Make a label on a 3x5 card with a pencil.

5. Put the label inside the baggie with the cuttings.

6. Wet a paper towel and put it inside the baggie to maintain almost 100 % humidity.

7. Press any excess air out of the baggie so that it will not take too much space.

8. ZIP the baggie closed so that the moisture cannot escape.

9. Be sure to put the baggie in a cool protected place out of the sun, and either plant the cuttings or refrigerate the unopened baggie as soon as possible. When I am out in the field, Rose Rustling, I carry a cheap Styrofoam cooler, with a little ice and newspaper. I put the ice in the bottom with the sodas (double duty), then a layer of newspaper to keep the sodas cool and to keep the cuttings from getting frostbite, and then cuttings, and then the lid to exclude the sunlight.

10. I like to refrigerate the cuttings for 24 – 48 hours in the crisper portion of the refrigerator. It turns out that if the temperature is below 50 degrees, fungal spores will not germinate readily. So by refrigerating the cuttings for a day or two, I can suppress the fungal spores and they go to sleep for the “winter”. That gives the cuttings a head start on the fungus and it also permits the wound where the stem was cut to start forming a callus.

I really encourage you to take many, many more cuttings than you think that you (or I) will need, because you never know how many will strike roots. Typical success rates can be as high as 65%, or even higher for some roses, but they also can be 5% or less for other roses. So please [take] enough so that [you] will have a reasonable chance for success even if it turns out to be a “difficult” rose. The number of cuttings that you take from the plant should not be a concern unless the plant is very weak or severely damaged. I try to never take more than 1/3 of the foliage so that the plant will not be too shocked, but a little pruning (translate “rustling”) is actually good for roses now and then. It generally takes between 6-12 weeks to root a cutting and then there is a vulnerable period that lasts 3-6 months while the roots and foliage develop. But so far I have had pretty good success.

Hello Adam,

Thanks for your kinds words. I will take the time to answer your questions, and maybe add it to my web site. You ask some very pertinent and interesting questions. And I can certainly relate to them. I am a professional in the medical field, with two teenage daughters, and a very active role in my church. My life is filled with many things of greater importance than my roses. And I find myself not having enough time to take care of my roses the way I would really like to take care of them. I believe this last comment is the key to understanding your questions: At what level of care will we accept as adequate for our roses? That depends on who you are and what is important to you. Now some comments.

1. Some roses take much more time to care for than others. I have very few hybrid teas. For optimal bloom and health, they require more attention that I am willing to give. The roses that get the least amount of my care and still seem to do well are the hardy shrub roses and a few hardy ramblers. A hardy rose will have little die back due to the cold of winter, and hence require less attention to pruning. Some of my hardiest and healthiest roses are the older roses such as: Mme. Plantier, Felicite Parmentier, Hansa, Ghislane de Feligonde (one of my favorites) and the rambler Veilchenblau. There are quite a few more modern shrub and climbing roses that are hardy and quite disease resistant: Pink Grootendorst, Linda Campbell - and pretty much any Rugosa hybrid rose Lafter, Nearly Wild- Brownell roses Scarlet Meidiland, Pink Meidiland Climbers Dortmond and Henry Kelsey Most Griffith Buck roses are very hardy and quite disease resistant Species roses are also hardy and quite disease resistant. Especially rosa Rugosa alba and rosa Rugosa rubra. So, one MAJOR key to keeping maintenance to a reasonable level is to choose and grow the more hardy and disease resistance varieties.

2. Climbers take more time, in general, than shrub roses. You must train, prune, and tie up these roses. Shrub roses can be left to "do their own thing" given enough room. Pruning is something, for some reason, that I enjoy. Maybe its the instant gratification of the effort: you can immediately see the result of your work, unlike fertilizing or spraying for disease. March 17, (no, I'm not Irish), is the target date to begin the pruning ritual with my roses. Takes about two good days work to do the job for me and the hundred or so roses large enough to require pruning.

3. Insect control can be a real demand on your time, or you can live with the damage. I personally never spray for insect damage unless I see a serious infestation. Maybe I'll spray a couple of times a few roses that have an aphid or rose slug infestation. I don't like to indiscriminately spray insecticides for fear of killing off the beneficial insects. One of my greatest joys during the growing season is to discover a praying mantis, walking-stick, group of lady bugs, or beneficial wasps living amongst the roses and other plants. My nemesis is the Japanese beetle. After their first appearance in my garden near Father's Day (ironic timing, I think), I hand-pick or knock-off the beetles into a small container of soapy water. Faster and more efficient than spraying willy-nilly every plant every week.

4. I hate black spot. My garden is full of trees, exposed to less sunlight than most rosarians recommend, and frequented by less air movement that the roses would like. Hence, in the balmy summers of southern Ohio, my garden is quite susceptible to black spot and mildew. Yet I am somewhat tolerant of it and resigned to the fact that many of my roses will be infected with black spot and lose a good number of leaves. Even so, I try to spray about 80% of the roses I grow with fungicide once every 7 to 10 days. If I spent more time and maintenance cleaning up the old rose leaves on the ground in the spring, I would likely have less black spot.

5. I only fertilize twice a season. I use a granular fertilizer once in the early spring after I prune, and once in June. I walk the garden with a bucket or bag full of fertilizer and toss a handful or two around the base of the rose. After making the rounds with the fertilizer, I grab my three-pronged, long-handled "scratcher/cultivator" and stir up the mulch and soil around the rose to mix in the fertilizer. If I have time and the ground is dry, I will then visit each rose and water in the fertilizer, but more often than not I don't.

6. Weeding is a never ending task, greatly reduced by the use of mulch around the roses and throughout the garden. Still, four to five times a season, beginning in March and ending in September, I walk the garden and very carefully spray the weeds and other unwanted volunteer seedlings with Roundup. Be very careful when doing this: Roundup on the leafless canes of roses in early spring is not a good thing! I learned the hard way. One spring, early March I believe, I felt clever and decided to spray Roundup early to eliminate the weeds growing under and near the roses. I killed a couple of roses, and seriously set back the growth of probably two dozen roses. Took about two years for some of these roses to recover. And the only exposure the roses had to Roundup was on their canes.

7. I should deadhead the repeat bloomers far more faithfully than I do. I eventually get around to removing the spent blooms, but sometimes a rose may go a week or more before I take the time and exercise my pruners.

Well, Adam, that's about it. More than you asked for. But I find it easy to write about roses to those who are sincerely interested.