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Growing a rose stem
maticcesar8
Posts: 1
in Plants
Hello everyone!
My grandma has passed away and I managed to grab a single rose stem that was used as a farewell on her funeral. I am aware it is not the most common or polite thing to do. However what I want is to make the stem grow into a full grown plant. It is winter so i would have to keep it inside, but I have absolutely no idea about gardening therefore I would be really thankful for every advice i could get. My goal is to make the rose big enough so it can be separated to 3 cloned plants so I could give them to my mum, my aunt and my grandpa next year on the 1 year of my grandmas death.
I apologise for the language, I'm not a native english speaker.
Thanks again,
M.C.
0
Posts
I would give this a try. Dig a trench in your garden. Fill it with sharp sand. Buy a little pot of rooting hormone gel from your local garden centre. Cut your shoot diagonally at the top end and straight at the bottom. Dip the bottom 3cm in the hormone compound. put the rose stem into the sand with maybe 12-15 cm coming out at the top. Firm in and water well from the tap, not a standing water butt. Leave it over winter. Your chances of success are slim, though.
A technique I once had some luck with, using a fairly small stem of holly, was to put it into Oasis (from florists). It went into a table display on Christmas Day. Afterwards the whole display was put into the garden in a sheltered area under a verandah, and forgotten about! By spring it had produced quite healthy roots and still grows in the garden.
It seems like the vital features are keeping the whole set-up pretty clean (hence the sand or Oasis as a medium, rather than soil), and having a constant supply of clean water--I once rooted a rose stem, again by accident, in a blue glass bottle in pure water. Cool rather than warm, but not frozen.
The Oasis method might be the most controllable.
Make sure you don't leave too many leaves on your cutting.
Good luck!
It had been a cut flower in a bouquet. I had no plans to propagate it! I think I would have cut off the dead flower at the top but it sat in the vase for a bit and I saw roots... I have often wondered whether the blue light had an effect. It was just literally sitting in plain water. One other thing to report is that at the bottom end, there was a little section of the stem that branched. So perhaps that gave an increased surface area for rooting. But neither in this case, nor in that of the holly cutting (which was about a 10cm long shoot tip) did I use any kind of rooting compound. So that I can certainly endorse. Unfortunately I can't remember the exact time of year for the rose, but think it was about September or October; however, the other method of cool slow rooting on Oasis or sand might work. At any rate, it's worth a try!
Please don't apologise ; your English is far superior to some of the 'English' on this forum !!
I'm no rose expert by any stretch of the imagination , but is it possible to cut the stem into smaller lengths , place in a propagator with bottom heat in sharp sand and keep moist ??
Never tried it , and I've no idea if this method would work , but I empathise with maticcesar8 and would like to help if possible
.
An expert on roses will probably laugh at my 'idea' !
If it does root, please don’t expect to be able to take three more cuttings from it and have them rooted to give away in one year. I doubt whether a stem from a bouquet will be big enough to cut into four , they need to be at least six inches long in the first place.
Here’s are good instructions for roses cuttings
http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/grow-plants/how-to-take-rose-cuttings/