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txgrnhs

rooting cuttins

txgrnhs
14 years ago

i work at a commercial greenhouse. we have a heated floor and a mist system. i have been propagating roses off and on this fall with limited success. i stick cuttings in 6-paks. i use my regular growing mix. some root immediately and others rot. i use a variety of sizes of stems. some thicker and some thinner. after reading some of the posts, i intend to mix extra perlite into the mix for drainage. i put the cuttings on the cool end of the greenhouse. i mist them every hour for 2 seconds. i turn off the mist at night. i usually leave 2-3 leaves, and cut them down by half.

my questions are:

what age of wood should i be using now. should i be using hardwood now, and store them in the fridge for awhile to callous, and then plant them, or just direct stick them.

how often should i be misting.

Comments (3)

  • kevins_choice
    14 years ago

    if you do a google search on stent grafting roses it might give you some ideas. i just set up a small misting system and put some stent grafts in it so i will see how it goes. i used decomposed granite and sieved out all the fine stuff and then cooked it over a fire to produce steam through it for some time to sterilize it and sprayed the cuttings with a fungicide. after looking up what to do on this site by doing a search for striking cuttings.

  • jont1
    14 years ago

    I put about 65 cuttings in pots the first week of December of about 7 different cultivars.
    I use a mix of coconut coir/seedlig starter soil/perlite in my clear 3.5" X 4" pots and then cover them with a quart size ziplock bag so each has their own mini greenhouse. Each cutting is about 5" tall and I lightly score the very bottom of the cutting and dip it in rooting hormone. Then I make a hole in the "soil" with a chopstick and insert the cutting and press the soil around it to make it sturdy and have good contact with the soil around it.
    I only spritz cuttings after putting them in the moistened soil so it doesn't get too wet and cause the cutting to rot instead of root. I just remove the ziplock bag, squirt the cutting twice, and then replace the bag over the cutting and pot.
    I use the spritz bottle and mist them every other day while they are rooting and have had pretty good success this way. It generally takes about 8 weeks to root--if they are going to that is.
    Some roses are easy to root and some never do like Lucille Ball. I have probably struck 100 cuttings of Lucy and have never gotten a single one to root this way. But, I used two Rooter Pots on her this past Fall and got two gorgeous rooted lucy plants that started out 1' tall with a nice big rootball.
    I think these Rooter Pots are the way to go if you only want a couple of new plants or have one that is difficult to root like Lucy. I rooter potted 22 times and got 20 of them to root. The two that didn't were started late and it got very very cold the whole first month of October so the wounded cane just healed over and didn't root. My fault I guess.
    John

  • alameda/zone 8/East Texas
    14 years ago

    John, where do you find coconut coir? Can it be ordered? I have not been able to find it in my area and I understand it is the best medium to root cuttings.