Hey again, it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm
Well, you know, I do a lot of propagation videos particularly on roses
but also on shrubs and other perennials and one question I've been asked an awful lot is
Whether it makes sense to use honey as a rooting hormone, sometimes this is asked in the context of well
What if I can't find your recommended rooting hormone in my local area?
Could I use honey instead other people recommend it as a more natural alternative to rooting hormone
I want to put all that to the test today by doing an experiment where I'm going to pose cutting stuck with honey
versus cutting stuck with dip and grow which is a liquid mixed rooting hormone as well as
With my standard rooting powder that I use for semi hardwood cuttings and I'll do a fourth group as well
And that group will be stuck with nothing at all. Just no
Hormone, no, honey. No nothing. So the question becomes
How quickly will they put on roots
I actually think that the variety of chosen which what I've chosen is a rose called fellowship
It's actually pretty eager to root on its own already
I've done I've had a lot of success propagating in the past even this late in the season
There's no question that I should be able to get some roots on before winter. So the question isn't so much whether they will succeed
There may be rates of difference there as well
But rather how quickly they will succeed and I expect that ones that have rooting hormone should at least in theory
Put down roots a little bit faster than either the group that has the honey or the groups that is stuck with nothing at all
That's in theory. The way that honey is supposed to work is it actually works as a protectant? It isn't really intended to
Speed up
The rooting. I don't think it has any hormones in it or anything that is supposed to have that mode of action
it's really just there to coat the bottom of the cuttings and keep the bacteria and fungus from
Infecting it or killing it before it has a chance to put down roots
So I'm gonna try all this out and start collecting some fellowship cuttings from the field here and we'll catch up with you after that
So this is the experimental setup here. What I have here is the
They'll be sticking these cuttings into and over here are the cuttings that I just took off of the donor Rose
Fellowship, and if you want details about how to do these kinds of cuttings with three or four different nodes on them in the semi
Hardwood stage just refer back to my video on the complete method for doing
Roses by cuttings, I'll link that above because I go through it in detail, and I don't want to repeat it all here. So
The easiest ones to stick will be the ones that I'm just doing with no rooting hormone at all. And
See those just go straight in normally I stick two
In a pot. I usually do a larger pot than this and nine centimeter pot or a four inch pot and I go to
Into a pot in this case. I'm just going to use a single one in a pot for the sake of ease of
Checking on it. So that's the easiest to constrict the ones that have
no, no rooting hormone directly after that what I like and this is the one I use most frequently in all of my
Other cuttings is I use the ones with rooting hormone
Powder and the powder I find really easy to apply
Just a quick
stick
tap
Stick and that's it
The third easiest to apply will probably be the dip and grow
That's a little debatable the dip and grow is a liquid mixed
Rooting hormone with both
IBA and NAA as
rooting hormones inside of it and
its ease of use is really really easy like sticking that is
Really fast really easy. It's not even a tap. It's just dip and
Grow as the name would say the downside to it is that you have to mix it before every application
So you fill it to a concentration line at the bottom you dilute that with water
And there's all sorts of warnings on the label about not coming in contact with this stuff
So have to be a little bit cautious while you do it as well. So
Debatable whether it's easy
Compared to the honey, which is actually really easy to use as well
but a little bit messy, so every time I dip in here you got this string of honey coming off of it and
I'm an impatient guy. So I'm going to go ahead and stick from it
But as I do that I know that I will be leaving
little strings of honey all over the place and
To avoid contaminating all the other roses. What I'll do is I'll take the cup with me
but
That's it. So I'll finish up this tray here. Don't need you for all the sticking but I'll finish up this tray here and
The first row will be the row that is stuck with no rooting hormone at all or no treatment
The second one will be the one that I deal with rooting powder. The third one is with dip and grow
That's the liquid mix and the fourth one will be with honey
And I will catch up with us in about three weeks or so
When I start looking for callusing and early rooting across the bottoms of these cuttings
Well, we're waiting for those cuttings to root
Let me quickly go through a few of the other alternative rooting treatments
Sometimes suggested in researching this I found a lot of guessing and anecdotes
But I wasn't able to find a lot of good research or evidence that these things work
So your mileage can and will vary in addition to honey
Some of the commonly suggested full treatments are and all number these just for convenience
Number one cinnamon powder which is supposed to work a lot like honey as an antifungal agent
I also he repeated for seedlings
To stop damping off, but it sounds kind of messy to me and I've had good success without it
Number two is willow water
And this is usually prepared by crushing or chopping willow branches
Into boiling are and there's good reason to think that this could work as a rooting stimulant
It contains IBA, which is an active ingredient to the commercially prepared rooting powders
and my only concern would be how would you know or control the
concentration of the hormone and I suppose what you'd have to do is use a consistent and strong recipe and then
Experiment a bit to find out how much you would dilute the will of water for the right concentration for your plants
number three on the list here is
Aspirin which is also based originally on extracts of the willow and some people claim good success
Using aspirin tablets dissolved in water to encourage roots number four here
I've heard a lot about aloe vera and hey sure
It seems like this stuff is good for everything from skincare to shiny hair to treating constipation
So why wouldn't you use it as a rooting hormone - I did see some studies on it used in tissue culture
But nothing so far specific to plant cuttings that I've seen
Finally here a number five apple cider vinegar, which I'm not so sure where this one comes in
Except it's another thing that people seem to recommend for just about everything
If you are planning on trying it
make sure to dilute it to a week solution as full-strength vinegar is quite damaging to plant tissues and
My take on all of these is to approach them with an open mind, but also healthy skepticism
And please also remember that the criteria for success should not simply be that your cuttings survived or were
successful
because that can happen even without any treatment if you give them the right growing conditions a good measure of success should be that you're
Treated that your treatment speeds ruining past this natural rate and preferably at least as much as a commercially available
Hormone powder or treatment time to check on the cuttings now, see how they did initiating rooting now
My greenhouse is going into the winter season here
I've left it open for air circulation, but I've gotten some cold winds come through here recently and
frosted off the tops of my plants
So no surprise here that the roses went ahead and dropped all their foliage not a big deal
I'm looking for the rooting. Anyway, see how they did. So basically you can still see that they're lined up the way they were
With the honey here. This one here is the dip and grow. This one here was done by rooting powder
And this one here was done with nothing at all. Let's have a closer look and see how they took to rooting and calluses
Okay here they are all lined up and I'm hoping I can get some good close-ups here
So for thing I'm going to do is pull out the ones that were
Stuck in honey, and I'm gonna see if I can get a good shot of the base of these
And get the camera to focus on that
There you go
And you can hopefully see
That although there's no rot. That's come into it
there also is no real signs of Callison or routing and
I'll maybe see if I can get some still photos of that as well because it's going in and out of focus here
alright, let's look at the ones that were routed with the dip and grow and
slightly different story on these
Is that I can see strong Callison
On all three of these you
See that sort of white scar tissue across the bottoms and the bottom ring of those cuttings
so that's what I was hoping to see in the course of about three weeks is
They should at least have some good callus on them
Now moving on to the one with rooting powder. I
See even more striking root development
At least on the ones on the two sides then one of the middle just has a little bit of Callison
right here, but this one here has callus and
Root
Same with this one over here. Good strong callus here
and root there
and
Finally, let's look at the one that is the control
By control, I don't mean that in a scientific way because this really isn't large enough a sample to be scientific
but just to mean the one that I didn't dip into any rooting hormone and I
Don't think I could call that
Meaningfully different than the honey. This one is showing some decent Callison
See if I can get that to come up there
Yeah, that one's showing some decent callusing these ones here. Haven't done much yet
So there you have it in this very limited sample size. What I'm seeing is the best routing from the rooting powder
dip and grow had some good strong Callison and
Honey, and the one treated with nothing
Basically haven't really begun yet which at this time of year can be significant to the results because we have very limited amounts of time
to get some roots onto these and
so I would choose the ones with the act of rooting hormones in them ahead of honey, or
Sticking without just because it gives me a fighting chance of getting these routed before the winter
Well, thank you so much for watching today
I hope this answered some of your questions about the alternatives that are often suggested against rooting hormones things like, honey
And aspirin and aloe vera and if you have any other questions or any suggestions, please drop those in the comments below the video