The Coastal Gardener - August, 2005
Making rose cuttings
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Asters are beginning to bloom along the porch among the late roses. They are backed by golden grass and the sea; brilliant and diamond sparkled. Each stem is crowned with about 50 tiny yellow centered blooms in deep velvet purple or soft pink. Asters star with a supporting cast of ferny purple fennel, red-tiered blooms of Crocosmia and filmy grasses. A few yellow bidens gather at their feet, sending out lacy stems around and through the aster's clumps.
Everything in the garden could probably use a good deadhead by now, and I am not talking about the Grateful type. The late summer doldrums take the form of faded flowers and swelling rose hips. As I briefly mentioned last month a good haircut all around will give the garden a fresh clean look and prompt a new flush of flowers and foliage.
But don't be too hasty in your rush to the compost heap with your spent stems for August is the ideal month to strike cuttings from roses. The ripened soft wood just below a panicle of rose hips is the best from a propagation standpoint and cuttings struck now will be rooted and ready to pot come next spring.
Advantages of propagating roses are many. First being the ability to grow a variety that you found in the garden of someone special. Second, since the new rose will be growing on its own roots and not grafted, the plant will exhibit some of its natural rooting and clumping traits. These include forming small colonies of shoots that are more graceful and full bodied than those produced on grafted specimens particularly among English and antique varieties. Third it allows you to produce at almost no cost many new plants for your own garden and to give as gifts. What could be more special than a rose you grew yourself?
Here is the basic how to: Select ripe softwood from the top 2 feet or so of the stem below the spent blooms. Each cutting should have at least 3 nodes, joints where a leaf was once held, and be at least 6 inches long. Cut each segment just above and below the nodes, so you have a node right at the bottom another right at the top. This is where new roots and shoots will grow. Dust the end of each segment in rooting hormone powder. Then place it a pot of moist potting media or perlite, with at least 2 nodes covered. Cover the pot, which can contain several cuttings with a clear plastic bag or group them together under a clear plastic cover. The cover helps to create a humid climate. Keep the media moist until new growth starts than gently remove each cutting to its own pot in spring. Expect some mortality.
Now is the time to take advantage of sales offered by the bulb exporters and save on spring blooming bulbs. Many offer tempting discounts for early orders prepaid in August. This is also the time to place orders for garlic bulbs, vegetable seed, cover crops and mushroom growing kits for fall planting.
Must have plant of the month: Helianthus maximiliani "Santa Fe," Maximilian Sunflower. This southwest native glories in hot weather with a massive show of 6 inch yellow sunflowers clustered thickly on 6 to 8 foot stems that form spreading clumps. Deer resistant and drought tolerant. Available through High Country Gardens of Santa Fe (add www. & .com to name).
Underappreciated plant of the month: Juniperus conferta, Shore Juniper. Sophisticated gardeners have long rejected this humble evergreen as too common, but junipers can be graceful and beautiful, providing structure to flower borders. Junipers have the added advantage of being long lived. Specimens planted 40 or 50 years ago still inhabit harsh conditions with little or no care. The Shore Juniper grows a mere 6 inches tall by 3 feet wide and is ideal for the edge of the border or as a low care groundcover inter-planted with spring daffodils. They can also provide much needed greenery to cover the unsightly ankles of tall roses or provide structure over which to tumble a tangle of clematis.
Enjoy! Dave Egbert
