Hi, it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm today, I want to talk to you about growing roses from cuttings This is my propagation technique that I use for growing around a thousand roses at my small-scale backyard nursery of roses and I'm going to show you how I do that using the semi hardwood technique under timed mist That's the way I do it. I've had some questions about this in the past So I want to include a lot of close-ups so you can see exactly what I'm doing on the rose cuttings themselves I'm going to show you my misting system and why I think it's the better alternative than using domes or tints on top of your roses and I'm going to also go over towards the end of the video the timeline that I use in terms of taking these cuttings How long it should take to develop roots? how long you keep it in that small pot before you up pot it and when it would be ready for sale or in your case if you're not selling them for Giving away or putting into your own garden. I'll cover some of the common questions. I've had about this in the past So the first thing I'll talk about is the technique itself It's a semi hardwood technique and the only way to describe that is by getting hands-on with the rose So this rose cutting the stem that I took here off the rose in my garden today is in full bloom And if anybody's wondering about it, that's a 'Stephens Big Purple' and on it I can demonstrate that at the bottom end of the stem here way down it is already hardwood. I'm just going to pull off the leaf or two here so you can see better But there's not that much to see because I almost can't bend it If I were to continue to persist, I think I would probably snap it. So that's hard wood material That's not what I'm choosing I'm choosing semi hardwood material But the only way to describe semi hardwood is by showing you what it's not. The second one here is softwood This is too soft right and You can feel on this and a telltale sign on roses is this lush red stem growth right from the tips of the roses? That's too soft. Under my system, that would dry out too quickly That's a softwood technique if you wanted to try to root those so for semi hardwood you're choosing What's not too soft and not too hard, but right in the middle is this section that has some bend to it It has some firmness to it and that's semi hardwood So why do I choose semi hardwood technique comes down to that? It's the best right balance for me of Easy and adaptable to a wide range of roses I do about a thousand cuttings a year from this method and it works well for all sorts of different roses whether it's hybrid teas with the big long stems or whether it's Floribundas with smaller stems some of the shrub roses or landscape roses. And in fact, it works fairly well for non roses too so I grow a lot of other things like fuchsias and hydrangeas and all sorts of plants with this semi hardwood technique under mist It is fast and easy compared to other methods so if you do a hardwood technique That one is going to take a long time like sometimes up to 8 months or even a year before you're plotting that into a new pot So and you do that It doesn't take a lot of effort but is a long process soft wood technique requires a lot more warmth a lot more Mist a lot more careful management So this is the right balance for me and I'm hoping it will be the right thing for you as well So before I get going on taking the actual cuts here, I need to talk about by my cutting supplies here These are my clippers (pruners). And the thing to know about the clippers is not about a specific brand I did a whole video on how to Maintain your pruners and that's the important part is that you need a clean sharp blade. So for the clean part, I use a quaternary disinfectant Now some people ask me where to get this questioner a disinfectant. I buy it from my local horticultural supply store under the trade name Virkon and you just spray it on and let it sit for 30 seconds and it kills all of the viruses and Bacteria and fungal infections. It could be passed from rose - rose because I do almost 200 varieties now on the farm here I don't want to risk spreading infection from one variety to the next And if you can't find at your local horticultural supply store. I've listed some of my amazon store that's just quaternary disinfectant tablets that that I found Lacking that just get good old-fashioned Lysol spray from the aerosol can that's safe and effective on your Pruners or the Lysol wipes I would stick away from bleach in general just because it has a tendency to corrode the blades once you've cleaned it Not a bad idea to... well I've already sharpened it but make sure that it is nice and razor-sharp for your cleanest possible cut and I generally Lubricate my blade as well. That's a step. You don't have to do between every cutting, but I'm just indicating to you The way I would like to start with my clippers when I start a job like this. Okay, so I've identified a semi-hard width section I'm going to cut just above a Leaf node a leaf node is where the leaf leaves the stem Okay, and a successful cutting in my system generally has on it probably three or four Leaf nodes on this one here and don't know if you can get an exact view on it, but I'm looking at four Right down here and I cut just below the bottom leaf node So this to me is a viable cutting but I have to make a couple of adjustments to it Before I stick it in the ground because if I just stuck it say the ground I mean the potting soil if I just stuck it like this that bottom leaf and Leaf node will be buried don't want that material on there. In fact under my system under the mist I don't need a whole ton of leaves on there regardless, so I'll pull off this leaf. I'll pull off this leaf and This one and on the top leaf here. I'm either gonna leave four Or maybe even just two leaflets Yes, that's a radical reduction in the amount of foliage But that's okay. It's I've had good success with this level here You could leave on a little more if you'd like to but that's the way I've done it pretty consistently now with this cutting the next thing I'm going to do is Use rooting hormone. So this here is a semi hardwood rooting hormone I varies from market to market which one you'll be using here locally I've been able to pick up Stimroot #2 But if it's a Hormel product if it's something else a powdered product is good. There's also liquid products that you can mix up So there's a whole ton of them out there. I don't mind which one you use Just make sure that you use the one that has the right concentration of the active ingredient for semi hardwood cuttings And that's the keyword that you'll be looking for on the packaging Give it a dip Personally because I've produced so many of these don't do any work and stripping off thorns or Scoring out the bottom end of the cutting you'll see those techniques with other people and that's fine if they have good success with it That's fine too because I'm doing hundreds of cuttings. I don't do that step and then I just stick it into The pot and I see there I buried one of the leaf nodes The second leaf node is still sticking out and so are the other two So I have a total of four leaf nodes on here. Only one of them is buried and it's not even that deep. I Don't think it's useful to stick the plant all the way down to the bottom of the pot you're really then exposing more of that stem to the residual moisture in the soil and That gives more chance that the moisture will help it to rot. So I just put it in like that Now I will show you That on some other cuttings that I just made here recently that and They look quite a bit the same just a day for variety that I've put two into a pot so I repeat myself every time the reason I do that is that my bench space under that mist is valuable space and I don't waste it in case one or another of those cuttings fails and then I've used That space up for a duration of time on a pot that is completely failed. So I put two of them in there Almost all the time I get at least one of those sometimes I get two and That way I haven't wasted the bench space for that for that period of time So going back to the step of selecting your cutting it's not quite as clear cut all the time as picking a big beautiful stem like the one I showed you and getting those big Long cuttings: does the size of the cutting matter? The answer to that is and I'm trying not to get too much innuendo into the answer, but yes: size matters the larger the cutting the more energy it has stored in it and Sometimes that will lead to faster Rooting but you don't always get that choice when it comes to the roses that you're growing in your landscape in fact the cutting I showed you first is more typical of a hybrid tea or a Grandiflora, if you're cutting from a miniature if you're cutting from a floribunda if you're cutting from a landscape rose it's much much more likely that your Cuttings will be a shorter section and much much thinner like for instance this one here This is a cluster flowering miniature climbing rose ('Laura Ford') and If I look at it If I go back to the main stem try to get that big thick stem that's already gone to hardwood firmness So that's not going to be appropriate for my system So I have to look if I want to get it cutting off of this. I have to look at these stems up here and From those stems up here. I Can find one? That is in the semi hardwood stage But you can see that it's much much thinner than the one that I used Previously and pull that off there. This one has only Three leaf nodes on it, but I'm still fine with that. It's still going to trim off a couple of leaves on top that's about enough leaf surface area stick that into a pot and then not to forget To take a cutting you have to label it right away Maybe you have a better brain than mine to remember But if I don't label it right away I'm gonna forget what it was and then I'll be cursing myself in six months from now So now how do you know if you've been successful at this stage? So you go back to it a few weeks later in my case. Three to four weeks later. I start checking on the cuttings and If you've been successful, you'll start to feel them pull back So from a tray that I took a few weeks ago you didn't feel as I pull on this this cutting here It's not coming out anymore. In fact If I pull out the pot You'll see hoho, there we go a big beautiful set of roots on there just in a few weeks now the roots are not the end-all of this situation because Your new plant needs to root and it needs to shoot Sometimes you'll see big lush roots grow on a new rose, but it hasn't grown any top growth yet You haven't hit the finish line yet. It may still get there but what you're looking for in in addition to that is that it's sending brand-new shoots of leaves that Tells you that you've made it for the cutting these ones here. I've got two in the pot. So what I can do If I'm trying to get more of the same variety is just very very gently Tease those two apart and Now I have two different roses And while I'm still covering the technique a word or two on the soil itself the soil that I'm using here Currently because I use different soils as they're available to me is Just a composted bark based mix. It's just sterile. It has no fertilizer in it You're not looking for anything with fertilizer in it. It should drain fairly well Sometimes I use the potting mix that has perlite in it again, just based on the time of year what I have on hand but Really the the qualities are no fertilizer Well draining, but with a fair amount of fine material in it is good Okay, so now a word or two on misting now You obviously have to keep your rose Cuttings from drying out by cutting the bottom of the stem there you've deprived them of their only source of moisture They're either going to root really really quickly or they're going to die and in the meantime You want to stop them from drying out now your roses are going to die of one of two things If you fail, they're gonna die have one or two things. So either going to rot or they're going to dry out If they rot it's probably because there's too much moisture... or more correctly, I will say too much Standing moisture - too much moisture that just stays in the same place on the rose all the time So air circulation becomes a really really important thing so you can see on this tray here That I took again three weeks ago, maybe four weeks ago at the top end that there's a ton of air circulation between those roses and The mist that I have and I have a misting head here. You can probably see just hanging out on the bench behind me I've pulled the other one out of the way, so it doesn't obstruct my face in this camera shot but the mist that I have goes on this every Currently because it's a cloudy day. It's gonna go on every 10 minutes for about 6 seconds now Those numbers are gonna vary by your climate They're going to vary by your greenhouse conditions or by the way that you're you're running it But in this case, that's what I'm using and you can see that these are doing just perfectly in fact I think most of these are and this is the way you can check if they've made Roots yet, of course is just pulling on them And once they don't pull out easily as you as you pull on them They have rooted see that one There is still able to pull out but at the base of the cutting I can see nice Callus forming that that's the sort of scar tissue around The ring at the base of the cutting so this one is well on its way Another big advantage of doing the cuttings under mist is that you can do them in large numbers, which this is that's of course why I do it here is that I can get a tray like this that can start out with like 36 or if I Triple them up Then it can be 54 cuttings all in the same tray and I can put that on this bench here. I can fit you know 14 trays or 16 trays so you can multiply that out and go wow That's a that's a lot of cuttings. You can fit all in one area. I don't have to have a bunch of individual domes I don't have to have a bunch of individual covers or or worry that much about air circulation. It's all by the method It's all taken care of right from the start here. So now how hard is it to set up timed missed? It's it's actually not that hard. You need a couple of ingredients. You need a timer that is good at doing cycle timing So you'll be able to have that have that flexibility in the timer To do a certain number of seconds over a certain number of period and on my timer it has a window as well So I only run the mist from say, you know, 9:00 in the morning up to about 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon And then after that I let them dry down for the evening Which I would suggest as well you have to have a solenoid that opens up an irrigation system and then you have to have misting heads like these ones here and The misting head I'm using here actually is not a misting head. It's just a a Wide dispersed irrigation head that I can put on for a short period of time and it just gives me good even coverage So whatever you use it gives you good even coverage over that over that bench is fine The it doesn't have to be specifically one of those Micro droplet and mist systems which can clog fairly easily. So I like this one a little bit better so Let's assume you've set up your time to mist and you're wondering you're at the timer You're ready to press the buttons How much mist? Do you offer over what length of time in my case like I mentioned it's something like six seconds or 10 seconds of mist over the course of ten or fifteen minutes That's in my circumstance here. I'm in a cold frame greenhouse I have some shade installed above so things don't dry down too too quickly. You're gonna have to make that call yourself Based on what you see happening with your plant. So what are you looking for? Is you're looking for a a Wetting of the foliage but not a watering of the soil So the wetting of the foliage you needed to get wet But then you want it to dry down in between the mistings the soil I find should be Just moist and not wet not soaking wet I find that the longer that it is wet and the roses are in it the greater the chance that those roses Will rot from the bottom up and that's usually what you'll see in terms of rotting as you'll see a blackness or brownness Just the soil line if you're starting this for the first time I know it's discouraging when you see just a little bit of blackness or brownness creeping up from Below the the soil line, and I know a little bit of wishful thinking maybe that you'll be able to save that plant but no once you see any amount of darkness or blackness at the soil line pull on that thing, you'll find the bottom end has has rotted out and Your job is done. So yes, you're misting the foliage not the soil the alternatives to using a misting system is to use a tent or a dome or some other way of Trapping the humidity or trapping the moisture around your plants It could be a decent solution too because then you don't have to attend to it quite so much You can just leave it the moisture will be trapped inside of it. The soil moisture will rise out of the soil It'll make the inside of that dome or tray Moisture but my risk there and the risk I wanna inform you of is that that standing moisture? will often lead to rot in your roses and that's why I moved away from using a system like that not to mention that I Didn't want to have a thousand little domes in here, but that the the trapped moisture caused problems So if you are looking for a dome solution if you're looking I'll try to put some on my Amazon store that are vented on the top because what you want to do is You want to adjust that venting so that you get you do get the condensation on the inside of the dome? But what you don't get is that standing moisture? That's the thing that's going to kill your cuttings. I've seen it used successfully if you take a Gallon milk jug and it has that That opening on the top and you just cut around the base of it and put it around some cuttings I've seen not used successfully. I've seen people to use the large pop bottles two-liter pop bottles that that you just open the lid on or or crack the lid on and That can work successfully. I've seen that used recently and very successfully So yeah, there's lots of ways to do this and frankly. That's the way I started out too is by using Domes and humidity to try to trap that on in on the roses If you eventually do get some success with it I do encourage the misting system because you can do a lot roses and my success rate has been a lot higher that way I'll talk to you now about timeline. My prime time for cuttings is all the way from June up to about September after that I don't think I have enough time to root them and still get them through the winter So I root them in a size pot like this. This is a four inch or nine centimeter pot these ones were taken in June and Have big fat roots to the bottom of the pot already. Those ones are going to be just fine and What I'll do is I'll keep them in this size of pot all the way through the winter so from June all the way until next February in next February, it's gonna look Something like this. Now. This one here was done last year and it's rooted Very heavily all the way through the pot this one I just didn't pot it up this year because it was a little behind the other ones But now it's ready and the next thing I'll do in that February time period is I'll pot it into a gallon pot like this with some fertilizer included now, let's talk about fertilizer because that's a part of the timeline as well during the time that you've got them under mist and They're not rooted. Fertilizing is not something you're doing. You don't want to add fertilizer to that situation fertilizer can tend to dry them out and like I said There's only two ways aside from rooting that this is going to end. They're either going to Die because they dried out or they're gonna die because they rotted you're not trying to encourage either one, so don't have fertilizer until they root once they've rooted then you can add a low dose of fertilizer say half rate of What you'd be expecting on a liquid feed that's what I use is liquid feed by the time I get them into this pot here in the spring then I've incorporated the slow-release Coated fertilizer into the mix to help it get through that year. So that's the timeline I'll add one more thing to the end of this video and it's just a a note on The question that I've had quite frequently is am I allowed to take cuttings from all these roses? so I've got this brand new week's rose or Patented rose or brand new rose that I've that I have in my garden It's lovely. I want to take cuttings of that and the answer to that Is that for the first 20 years after the Rose has been released It's generally under a plant patent Which means you can't legally go ahead and propagate that without the permission of the patent holder So the short answer is no on brand-new varieties Although I have to say I do a thousand cuttings a year and I do them from varieties that are no longer patented so after that 20-year period I mean there's Thousands - even tens of thousands of roses that are totally garden worthy. Totally worth propagating that are Totally available without you making any special arrangements of the patent-holder. So that's what I build my business around trying to maintain and propagate and disseminate garden roses that have fallen out of the trade and It would be my dearest hope that I could encourage some of you to do the same in your local area If you have any questions on any of these propagation techniques, I know I've kind of scratched the surface here But if you have any questions leave those below the video I'd be happy to take you through any of the finer points or details of what I do here and
