Fairy Rose
A beautiful flower that’s fairy easy to propagate is the rose. One of the most fun things about roses is that you can find heirloom roses in old cemeteries, at old farms, and around abandoned houses or places where houses used to be. ( For heavens sake, ask before you cut if you’re at a place that’s obviously lived in.) The other nice thing is that you can take cuttings as keepsakes of people you love, or as a memory of a place you visited. And heirloom roses are easy to grow. As the garden writer, Felder Rushing, says, “They’re so easy, dead people grow them.” That’s because so many are found in old cemeteries. If you ever visit the big cemetary in Jackson, Mississippi, where Eudora Welty is buried, you’ll find dozens of heirloom rose bushes.
If you’re not taking cuttings out of your own yard, where you can immediately stick them in soil, wrap your cuttings up in wet paper towels or wet newspapers. Take a cutting about as big around as a pencil, and about 6 or 8 inches long. Remove the bottom leaves but leave a few at the top. You don’t have to dip them in rooting powder, people were taking cuttings long before that was invented. If you have some and like it, go ahead and use it, but you don’t need it. (Willow has a natural rooting hormone in it. You can soak willow sticks in water and use the water to moisten your cutting, if you have a willow handy and feel you need extra hormones.) If you’re home and it’s not terrible cold out, you can just stick the cuttings in the soil, in the shade, and put a clear jar, like a mason jar, over it. Plastic liter bottles that have been cut off work, too. Just leave your cuttings there in the shade to grow. If you tug a little and they hang onto the dirt, they’ve rooted.
Maybe your climate is harsh and you’d rather root roses indoors. Place your cuttings into a pot with potting soil or perlite in it, and put a plastic tent or a sawed off plastic 2-liter bottle over it. I use those plastic bags you put produce in at the grocery store. I’ve even used plastic shopping bags. Puff it up where the plastic doesn’t touch the leaves. If it caves in, prop it up with a fork or Popsicle sticks or something. Some books have you create a wire contraption to hold the plastic up. I just use a stick or plastic fork.
In about a month you should have roots. Take a few cuttings because there is usually not 100% success. This is the way people have made more rose bushes ever since roses were discovered. Except they didn’t use plastic.
