Potting up rose cuttings with Alpaca Natural
We have a fabulous climbing rose at the front of our house. It’s been there for years and every year it produces dozens of huge fragrant roses. So in the early spring we took a few cuttings from it, that we planted with the hope that some of them would turn into nice and healthy rose plants that we could plant out once they are established. You can take cuttings from any type of rose you choose, but make sure you select long strong and healthy stems. If you take a cutting about 25cm long, then cut above a bud near the top which removes the shoot tip and then cut below one at the base, that should do it. Remove all the lower leaves and just leave one at the top.
For a long while it looked like nothing was happening and we started to wonder if any would survive. We fed them and left them behind the green house for protection and focused our attention on our things.
To be honest I’d forgotten they were there! But a few days ago, by chance I noticed, some healthy looking plants growing behind my greenhouse. They had of course grown bigger than I should have let them so were in dire need of potting up. Our plan is to plant them in the garden next spring so by potting them up now they can get a nice established root system set up before we do that.
Young roses like these have very delicate root system and this plant was no exception. It had grown surprisingly large and the roots were equally impressive. Luckily, I managed to take it out of its old pot without breaking too many roots and managed to set it down into the hole in the new pot without too much issues.
When you are working with roses make sure you pot up very gently and try and be as quick as you can as the roots are delicate and do dry quickly. Of course roses love our Alpaca Natural Fertiliser, the slow release and plenty of micro nutrients are just what these young plants need.
Martins top tip – Roses use up food reserves quickly and grow better if top-dressed each spring with a slow release fertiliser.
Using our all natural fertiliser we are confident we’ll get a great result with these climbing roses.
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