fresh and lovely roses from my husband, Feb 15th.
I accidentally started propagating some roses.
If you’ve followed me on social media for any amount of time, you probably know that I am no stranger to propagating plants. I might even venture to say it’s one of my favorite hobbies. I love taking one plant and making multiples. It’s a thrill for a cheapskate like me!
This is a first for me though. My Valentine’s Day roses from Jeff took a very long time to start to look ugly. They were on my mantle for nearly a month before I deemed them “too far gone”. When I finally got up to throw them away I noticed that they seemed to be growing.
March 15th
While I am fairly confident propagating almost anything, I don’t have the best track record with roses. Our first summer here, when my dad let me go absolutely ham in my late mother’s garden, I tried to propagate some cuttings from her rose bushes. I followed the tutorials I found online to a T. Alas, they just died. I haven’t tried again since – until now!
I did a bit more research on growing roses from store bought cut stems. The verdict seems to be that they will have trouble rooting or may not grow as strong as roses that weren’t specially bred for cut flowers. You know what though? I’m feeling hopeful. These bad boys are growing at a really impressive rate! Plus, what’s to lose if they don’t grow?!
Part of me wants to split them up, putting half in dirt and leaving the other half in water to see if that makes any difference. They seem to be doing so well exactly as is though so I’ll most likely leave them to it. Do ya thang, roses!
I wrote that above, grabbed the roses to get a few updated photos and promptly separated them to experiment. LOL, whoops. I ended up cutting away the dead flowers and divided them up into three different containers. One is on my mantle where the vase originally was. A second container is in the window so that it gets a lot more light. The third is in my mini greenhouse that I start seeds in. We’ll see if that boost in humidity seems to push them along any faster. Each is still only in water though. Water propagation always seems to work best for me. Anyway, now I’m happy to let them do their thang without any interruptions from me.
March 27th
I’m really excited about this little experiment. If you never hear of it again from me, chances are they just died but hopefully I’ll be able to share some photos of a tiny rose bushes sometime this summer. Cross your fingers for me. xo