Hey again, it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm Well, you know, I do a lot of propagation videos particularly on roses but also on shrubs and other perennials and one question I've been asked an awful lot is Whether it makes sense to use honey as a rooting hormone, sometimes this is asked in the context of well What if I can't find your recommended rooting hormone in my local area? Could I use honey instead other people recommend it as a more natural alternative to rooting hormone I want to put all that to the test today by doing an experiment where I'm going to pose cutting stuck with honey versus cutting stuck with dip and grow which is a liquid mixed rooting hormone as well as With my standard rooting powder that I use for semi hardwood cuttings and I'll do a fourth group as well And that group will be stuck with nothing at all. Just no Hormone, no, honey. No nothing. So the question becomes How quickly will they put on roots I actually think that the variety of chosen which what I've chosen is a rose called fellowship It's actually pretty eager to root on its own already I've done I've had a lot of success propagating in the past even this late in the season There's no question that I should be able to get some roots on before winter. So the question isn't so much whether they will succeed There may be rates of difference there as well But rather how quickly they will succeed and I expect that ones that have rooting hormone should at least in theory Put down roots a little bit faster than either the group that has the honey or the groups that is stuck with nothing at all That's in theory. The way that honey is supposed to work is it actually works as a protectant? It isn't really intended to Speed up The rooting. I don't think it has any hormones in it or anything that is supposed to have that mode of action it's really just there to coat the bottom of the cuttings and keep the bacteria and fungus from Infecting it or killing it before it has a chance to put down roots So I'm gonna try all this out and start collecting some fellowship cuttings from the field here and we'll catch up with you after that So this is the experimental setup here. What I have here is the They'll be sticking these cuttings into and over here are the cuttings that I just took off of the donor Rose Fellowship, and if you want details about how to do these kinds of cuttings with three or four different nodes on them in the semi Hardwood stage just refer back to my video on the complete method for doing Roses by cuttings, I'll link that above because I go through it in detail, and I don't want to repeat it all here. So The easiest ones to stick will be the ones that I'm just doing with no rooting hormone at all. And See those just go straight in normally I stick two In a pot. I usually do a larger pot than this and nine centimeter pot or a four inch pot and I go to Into a pot in this case. I'm just going to use a single one in a pot for the sake of ease of Checking on it. So that's the easiest to constrict the ones that have no, no rooting hormone directly after that what I like and this is the one I use most frequently in all of my Other cuttings is I use the ones with rooting hormone Powder and the powder I find really easy to apply Just a quick stick tap Stick and that's it The third easiest to apply will probably be the dip and grow That's a little debatable the dip and grow is a liquid mixed Rooting hormone with both IBA and NAA as rooting hormones inside of it and its ease of use is really really easy like sticking that is Really fast really easy. It's not even a tap. It's just dip and Grow as the name would say the downside to it is that you have to mix it before every application So you fill it to a concentration line at the bottom you dilute that with water And there's all sorts of warnings on the label about not coming in contact with this stuff So have to be a little bit cautious while you do it as well. So Debatable whether it's easy Compared to the honey, which is actually really easy to use as well but a little bit messy, so every time I dip in here you got this string of honey coming off of it and I'm an impatient guy. So I'm going to go ahead and stick from it But as I do that I know that I will be leaving little strings of honey all over the place and To avoid contaminating all the other roses. What I'll do is I'll take the cup with me but That's it. So I'll finish up this tray here. Don't need you for all the sticking but I'll finish up this tray here and The first row will be the row that is stuck with no rooting hormone at all or no treatment The second one will be the one that I deal with rooting powder. The third one is with dip and grow That's the liquid mix and the fourth one will be with honey And I will catch up with us in about three weeks or so When I start looking for callusing and early rooting across the bottoms of these cuttings Well, we're waiting for those cuttings to root Let me quickly go through a few of the other alternative rooting treatments Sometimes suggested in researching this I found a lot of guessing and anecdotes But I wasn't able to find a lot of good research or evidence that these things work So your mileage can and will vary in addition to honey Some of the commonly suggested full treatments are and all number these just for convenience Number one cinnamon powder which is supposed to work a lot like honey as an antifungal agent I also he repeated for seedlings To stop damping off, but it sounds kind of messy to me and I've had good success without it Number two is willow water And this is usually prepared by crushing or chopping willow branches Into boiling are and there's good reason to think that this could work as a rooting stimulant It contains IBA, which is an active ingredient to the commercially prepared rooting powders and my only concern would be how would you know or control the concentration of the hormone and I suppose what you'd have to do is use a consistent and strong recipe and then Experiment a bit to find out how much you would dilute the will of water for the right concentration for your plants number three on the list here is Aspirin which is also based originally on extracts of the willow and some people claim good success Using aspirin tablets dissolved in water to encourage roots number four here I've heard a lot about aloe vera and hey sure It seems like this stuff is good for everything from skincare to shiny hair to treating constipation So why wouldn't you use it as a rooting hormone - I did see some studies on it used in tissue culture But nothing so far specific to plant cuttings that I've seen Finally here a number five apple cider vinegar, which I'm not so sure where this one comes in Except it's another thing that people seem to recommend for just about everything If you are planning on trying it make sure to dilute it to a week solution as full-strength vinegar is quite damaging to plant tissues and My take on all of these is to approach them with an open mind, but also healthy skepticism And please also remember that the criteria for success should not simply be that your cuttings survived or were successful because that can happen even without any treatment if you give them the right growing conditions a good measure of success should be that you're Treated that your treatment speeds ruining past this natural rate and preferably at least as much as a commercially available Hormone powder or treatment time to check on the cuttings now, see how they did initiating rooting now My greenhouse is going into the winter season here I've left it open for air circulation, but I've gotten some cold winds come through here recently and frosted off the tops of my plants So no surprise here that the roses went ahead and dropped all their foliage not a big deal I'm looking for the rooting. Anyway, see how they did. So basically you can still see that they're lined up the way they were With the honey here. This one here is the dip and grow. This one here was done by rooting powder And this one here was done with nothing at all. Let's have a closer look and see how they took to rooting and calluses Okay here they are all lined up and I'm hoping I can get some good close-ups here So for thing I'm going to do is pull out the ones that were Stuck in honey, and I'm gonna see if I can get a good shot of the base of these And get the camera to focus on that There you go And you can hopefully see That although there's no rot. That's come into it there also is no real signs of Callison or routing and I'll maybe see if I can get some still photos of that as well because it's going in and out of focus here alright, let's look at the ones that were routed with the dip and grow and slightly different story on these Is that I can see strong Callison On all three of these you See that sort of white scar tissue across the bottoms and the bottom ring of those cuttings so that's what I was hoping to see in the course of about three weeks is They should at least have some good callus on them Now moving on to the one with rooting powder. I See even more striking root development At least on the ones on the two sides then one of the middle just has a little bit of Callison right here, but this one here has callus and Root Same with this one over here. Good strong callus here and root there and Finally, let's look at the one that is the control By control, I don't mean that in a scientific way because this really isn't large enough a sample to be scientific but just to mean the one that I didn't dip into any rooting hormone and I Don't think I could call that Meaningfully different than the honey. This one is showing some decent Callison See if I can get that to come up there Yeah, that one's showing some decent callusing these ones here. Haven't done much yet So there you have it in this very limited sample size. What I'm seeing is the best routing from the rooting powder dip and grow had some good strong Callison and Honey, and the one treated with nothing Basically haven't really begun yet which at this time of year can be significant to the results because we have very limited amounts of time to get some roots onto these and so I would choose the ones with the act of rooting hormones in them ahead of honey, or Sticking without just because it gives me a fighting chance of getting these routed before the winter Well, thank you so much for watching today I hope this answered some of your questions about the alternatives that are often suggested against rooting hormones things like, honey And aspirin and aloe vera and if you have any other questions or any suggestions, please drop those in the comments below the video
