Hey, it's Jason here from Fraser Valley Rose farm again, well, this video is one that I
hummed and hawed over whether I would make it or not. I had a lot of requests by people mainly on Instagram, but also on YouTube,
Wondering whether I've ever used potatoes for propagation. The truth is: No, I haven't
And I'm remedying that today. I'm going to make a little experiment
The main reason I haven't is that I've had no compelling reason to do so. If you look up my video on semi hardwood cuttings
You'll see that I do it
in soil like this (soilless mix is the proper term) and
I've had good success. Typically I can stick a cutting I'll know whether it's rooted within three to four weeks
I can pretty reliably get high percentages. And so I have no reason to add a potato to the process
However, because I've had the question I want to show you
What it would look like to use a potato for it. I'll set this up as an experiment
So I'm going to do the first stage here where I'm going to do the potatoes
And I'll also set up a tray on my previous or my regular technique. I'm going to compare those two together
and
So here's what I have for this. I've got some tags, some rooting hormone
I've got the potatoes here. I've got some cuttings and a drill
and the first thing I wanted to make comment on is that not every cutting is the same size and
that's going to be one thing that I'm going to be concerned about using potatoes. one of my goals is to do this as
Easily as possible
so if I take a
Potato like this. I
Want to drill it?
And make a hole for making a cutting
if I take this one here and
I
Can fit that in that's great
If that's of this one here, it's a little bit thicker around the base
Now I'll have to change drill bits to make this work and see why that is gonna really slow me down
for my
Propagation but again being a good sport
Doing it this way
Stick in a potato. The second thing I notice is that potatoes are not very flat, right?
so in a pot of soil
I can stick this into a tray have 18 up a nice tidy way to do it. This is
Not very stable
So what I'll probably end up having to do just to keep everything stable here and to be like the other videos where I've seen
the attempts to root roses in potatoes
Is I'll end up emptying out one of these put it inside and then cover it up with
soil which once again begs the question if I could fill this whole thing with soil and get good results that way
Why would I add a potato? the answer to that if I'm gonna be honest is I don't know if it'll work
the only reason it would ever be
Useful to me is if either it did a good job of rooting varieties that aren't so easily
struck from cuttings or whether it
Did such a better job rooting them more quickly that that it outstrips my other method
You know what? I'm not going to prejudge it. I'm a skeptic, but I'm not gonna go into it with
Prejudice so I'll give it a try see how it works and I'll get back to you with the results
That well, I'll do it in the same video and I'll just be the next scene you see
Okay, it's been 25 days since the time I took these cuttings and like I mentioned before it's usually about 3 to 4 weeks after
The time of cutting that I can tell how the roses are doing. You can probably see already
without keeping you in suspense that this side of the tray. It looks a lot different than this side of the tray
These are the ones that we're done with potato, and these are the ones that we're done without
so like I mentioned before about three to four weeks is about the time I can tell if the roses are reading or not and
The way I can tell
Usually is I can go up here and just give a little pull
to
the cuttings and actually I can feel already that these are pulling back and
What that means is that they've calloused and sort of a set roots down into the tray
same here and
Same here
So I'm going to review the details of the of the cuttings here
This first variety here is Fellowship and the corresponding row is this one here and just by
Visual here. You can see these ones are still nice and green and
Retaining moisture. Well, these ones here are starting to turn brown and they look they look like they're dead
I wanted to maybe just pull one out here and this is probably the wrong thing to do if I'm trying to
Encourage the continue rooting, but you can see at the bottom here
That it's nice and calloused and that's the formation of roots
Now this highlights one of the problems with the potato method in addition to it
just being more trouble to do is that it's really hard to tell because they're stuck in a potato and
They're gonna be hard to pull out anyway, so it's really hard to tell if they're succeeding or not
That one there I could tease out of the soil and find out this one here if I pull it out presumably
I'm gonna destroy any roots that are coming on
I'm gonna give it a pull anyway and just see if I could see anything across the base of this cutting and
Here's what I see. I
Don't see any sign of callus across the bottom of that at all
plus the condition of this is dry and
Failing so I can call that row a definite fail
Whereas these ones here are likely to succeed the second variety
I was going to show you here is Super Dorothy the difference in this is even more striking
Super Dorothy is an easy rose to root and
This one here is rooted so firmly
That I bet you if I look at the bottom here, you can see that the roots are already to the bottom of the pot
which is
fantastic
Here on the potato one
its exhibiting the same thing as it was for Fellowship: brown on the top and
if I go through the trouble of
Pulling it out here. I
can see
That there's just tissue on the bottom there, but no callousing
The other thing to note I noticed on this one here is I pulled it out is the potato is starting to shoot
Which could be its own complication in in this kind of a system
so
One more reason why I wouldn't take it on as my as my regular production technique
The third one here is Rose de Rescht and of the three, it's probably the closest and the results right now
This one here if I pull on it. I
can get it to come out and I
Can see good callus across the bottom of the cutting there. It's still nice and green and plump the
Leaves have started to die back. That's not unusual after three weeks of being
Under mist and it hasn't started to shoot new growth yet that the old leaves will start to die back
But on this one here, the condition is significantly worse. You can see there's drying right even on the stem here and I
Thought maybe what I would do with this one here
is
Instead of trying to pull it and see if there's any callus in there
I might just cut it and see if I can find it that way
And looking in here
You can see there's no sign of rooting coming from the base of the stem there. It's basically just
Stopped dead, so I can pull that safely now and see there's no callus there
so from these results, which is hardly a
large enough sample size to be scientific
I can tell you right away that under my production situations rooting with the potato has no advantages in fact a strong
disadvantage I
Guess you can call that debunking of the method. I have mixed feelings about that to tell you the truth
Every time I see the videos like this where they talk about rooting roses in potatoes on the internet getting millions of views
I think to myself
well
that's encouraging! that shows me that lots and lots of people are interested in growing roses and
propagating and other horticultural topics
Then I look at this and I figure:
If they don't get good results that could discourage their interest. So I want to show you what it looks like to me
It doesn't look like a viable alternative
compared to rooting the regular way
If anything I will admit this: maybe you can make this work. Maybe you can make potatoes and and
roses work together
But it isn't something that seems to me to be easier than the standard production technique
So for my money, you'd be better off learning
Standard propagation techniques and struggling with those and taking the learning methods that way than it is trying the shortcut of roses and potatoes
Thanks so much. And if you have any questions, please leave those below the video