Hello, it's a very windy old morning and I'm out in the greenhouse. And today I'm going to take cuttings
from the roses that I was given
just over three weeks ago so. They've been sitting in the kitchen,
looking beautiful, but now I'm going to take them on to the next stage. And so what I'm going to use are
my secateurs and a pair of gloves. Even Monty's here to help. Are you being very
helpful boy? So I'm going fill a pot with some compost, just a general-purpose
compost. I'm just going to take one stem at a time and just check it over a
little bit and make sure it hasn't got any damage on it.
And then using the secateurs snip off the bottomand snip off the head.
I'll just make sure there are no leaves on it.
And then just push it gently into the compost. It doesn't need very much
sticking at the top of the compost.
And then, a nice clean cut at the top and the bottom. Cut off the leaves and
then you just keep going. Now I haven't firmed this compost into
this pot, actually what I did was I gave it a bang on the workbench and
then actually, I did it on the ground in the end and just banged it a little bit,
just so that the compost would settle nicely into the pot, but not be too compacted.
One of the important things is that you have really sharp secateurs so
you get a good clean cut. Now I'm fairly sure that these ones are not sharp
enough because the cut isn't as clean as I'd like it to be. But they are the only
gardening ones I've got at the moment and so that's what I'm having to go with.
You see, this one's got a bit of damage at the bottom, so I don't want that so
I'll cut higher up.
And the leaves off. The thing about these is that pretty
much all roses are grafted onto a root stock, which obviously these ones won't
be, so there is no telling what your new rose plant is likely to be, in
terms of height or width or whether it would be a really straggly one or
whether it be any good at all. However there is a chance that it could be an
absolute cracker of a rose. I think that's a gamble worth taking and I don't really
mind whether rose plants are tidy or compacts or straggly. I still think the
flowers beautiful and we really like having the rose hips to be able to make
rose hip syrup and rose hip wine.
See this one has got damage in the middle, so I won't use that.
And that one's okay.
This pot will just sit outside for about a year and I will make sure it's
watered in dry weather and I'll come and check to see whether a signs of growth
or rot .
if aIy of them look like they're rotting, I'll take them out very quickly
to prevent disease spreading. And those that are growing, well, they will
stay in here until either late winter or early spring next year when I'll plant
them out to where I want them.
Everything that's left over, all these rose heads
and stems are now going to go out on to the compost heap. And I'm going to get
this outside and give it a good watering.
I'm pouring the water over it slowly so it's got a chance to sink down through
the compost. If you do it too quickly, all that's going to happen is it's going to
wash the compost off the top of the pot.
And a good way to check whether the water has got all the way through the
compost is to lift the pot up and see if the water is draining out to the bottom.
And now I'm going to label it, that's my birthday roses from 2018. And so that's
it! It really is that simple. I've come back inside now because it started
raining but when it pauses I'm going to be going out to the chicken field and
having a look at the wild roses and dog roses that are planted in the hedgerow.
Well, you can't really call it a hedgerow yet, it's only about 2 or 3 feet high, but
in a few years time it will be a hedgerow, so I'm going to go out, take
some cuttings from some of those roses, get those into a pot as well and then
I'll be able to add them to the hedge hopefully this time next year.
And so, wherever you are in the world and whatever you are up to today, I hope
it's a good one for you and I also hope you can join me again tomorrow.