Pre-callousing cuttings...

Queen's Mother looks like an interesting plant wphvet. Might have to look into getting this one myself

ozeboy,she's no fool and realises the poor striking rate of hybrid teas.Not wishing to spoil her good record she buys these as potted,grafted plants from the nursery!!

Hi Dave, I'm guessing you were talking about cuttings that have developed leaves but since I had three calloused cuttings of Ben Britten just potted up I tried the soak thing on one of them. It will be interesting to see if it responds differently.

I'll try Margaret's method in a month or so.

Wphvet, having checked QM on HMF, I'm with Simon. Will try to find this one.

Our queen mothers grow to around 3 ft high and up to 4 feet wide which is bigger than stated on help me find.She has glossy green foliage and the flowers sit atop the foliage and are always present from spring until autumn.She self cleans very well.rarely sets hips however.

Will have to wait till next year for QM... Treloars has sold out... Haven't seen it in the shops... it does, however, have a parentage that could be duplicated without too much trouble I think... I have some full species wichurana now... got a few more little surprises that might work too like some 'Paul Noel' (wichurana x 'Monsieur Tillier' )... think that might do well put back to 'Monsieur Tillier' I think...

Thanks for the tips. Simon, Dave and Wphvet.

I'm going to try the seasol trick, although I have previously drowned a few things after potting. (too much TLC).

The tub of stagnant water just has to be tried.........in the interests of science! Some people have very green thumbs.

The stagnet water thing works well, I had some roses sent from a member and had purchased one bagged rose, I placed these in tank water(rain) and some seaweed solution. I had other things to do and yes I forgot about them. They had some added rain to the tubs. On getting back to them they had shot and all but one had started to produce hair roots in this "dirty" water. They have been in the ground now for a month or better and are flourishing well.

On the subject of seeds, I was given some "Cathedral City" hips which are sitting in the zip bag they came in and as an experiment I have left them sit on the kitchen bench. With the small amount of moisture in the bag the hips have started to break down so I am going to leave them and see if this process will break the seed coat down enough for the seed to germinate, nothing lost, nothing gained in not tried.

Snap ! Roseman .
That's exactly what I did with most of the hips that I gathered off the bushes in my garden ; even more so after reading about the difficulty of getting the R. gigantea to germinate.
I'm not very scientific , I just figured that it was following the natural stages.
Also I found a lot of hips at that stage under the fallen leaves below my bushes [especially with some of the Austins]
I get a lot of volunteer tomato and apple seedlings [both roses relatives]come up from where the kids have dropped their core or martie in the garden.
Also a friend of mine who is a big commercial pumpkin grower over here , collects his own seed each year.
He selects the very best pumpkins and puts them aside and just leaves them . The interior starts to break down , then it goes all mooshy and fermented like and then eventually goes liquid and drains away . Then you just have the pumpkin skin and the seeds left behind .
He has a near perfect germination with his pumpkin seeds each year.

I must say the rose seeds are much easier to extract from the soft mushy hip than a hard one that you have to cut into.

Good Luck with your Cathedral City hips .

cheers. Rosalie

The cuttings of Multiflora I made on 16th January were calloused by 26th of January and will be planted today which is well under the 3 weeks.
Amazing what day and night temperature over 20 degrees C will do to speed up the process.

Bruce, do these still have a few leaves or are they leafless sticks calloused under wet hessian?

Simon, no leaves just cut top and bottom at 180 degrees and not disbudded. I have found the more exposed wood by removing the buds slows down the process of callusing on the bottom of the stick. I didn't disbud today and plant due to the 41 degree day

I use the thick potato sacks, one on the bottom and one on the top of the cuttings. These are on my garage cement floor but have done them on an earth floor as well. At this time of the year I spray the top bag with water every evening. There are around 150 cuttings to a pair of bags so it's unwise to heap them too high. The cuttings remain with a slight cover of moisture and are not allowed to dry out. Seems like there is a good supply of air through the bag as under 3 weeks damping off is not a problem.

In July August when working the understocks for November budding they take a lot longer to callus.

If Multiflora cuttings are put straight in after cutting and not callused the roots will come from the first node and not the bottom cut. They still seem to strike OK but are not as quick off the mark as the calloused ones.

I never use hormone powder or gel with Multiflora as this bumps the price up.

The sticks are sorted into pencil thick and some between 3/8" 1/2" to be used for the larger buds like climbers etc.

I just budded some large Altissimo buds onto some 3 year old Multiflora growing in pots which is a little difficult as the rind on the rootstock is as thick as boot leather and the bud is like news paper thickness. When activated these should be the fastest growers like the one that got up to 8 feet in six months from bud to 8 foot is very incredible growth.

Have you ever tried budding onto freshly calloused understocks? I was thinking of trying this sometime to see if that worked ok. I know some do it straight onto cuttings but I've had very poor luck doing it and thought maybe if I left it until the callouses had already formed it would be more successful. Budding onto cuttings is dead easy so callouses would be similarly easy and maybe... might be a nice little experiment.

No Simon never tried any of that but have made mention of going to do it but some how other things get in the way of this sort of experimenting.

I am going to send you some plant material this winter. There will be one that I am budding now so will leave the tape on and suggest you plant it,wait until it grows top shoots in August then take the tape off and cut the top branches off leaving about 4" above the bud. The bud should start to grow at this stage.

Thanks Bruce... quarantine have stepped up their efforts on mail coming here so rooted plants will find it difficult to get through, according to an article in last weeks local Ag. newspaper. They are really worried about Myrtle Rust getting here so have basically shut things down. I don't even like the chances of cuttings getting through at the moment

Don't quote me anyone but i think the method placing buds on calloused cuttings/rootstock is called"dormant budding"