April 6th, 2025: A bright, breezy afternoon settles over Salisbury, the air carrying the scent of newly turned earth.
Dear Reader,
I recently found myself scrolling through some online gardening groups, a welcome distraction as the days lengthen here. One post caught my eye, suggesting the use of perlite for propagating roses. Having a bag of the stuff leftover from a previous, less successful endeavor, I decided to investigate further. A quick online search led me to a helpful guide on the Greenery Awaits page…
If you don’t want to follow the link, here’s the essence of the process:
- Choose a healthy stem: Select a 4-6 inch stem with leaves.
- Prepare the cutting: Cut below a node, remove lower leaves.
- Prepare the perlite: Fill a container with moistened perlite.
- Plant the cutting: Make a hole and insert the stem, covering a node.
- Provide the right environment: Bright, warm, indirect light; cover for humidity.
- Wait for roots: Expect growth in 2-4 weeks.
- Transplant the cutting: Once roots are an inch long, move to soil.
- Care for the new plant: Water and provide indirect light.
I’ve got a variegated shrub cutting and a bit of tiger lily from a flower arrangement I bought JJ that hasn’t done anything from just sitting in water. I put a bit of rooting powder on them and put them in a tall thin plastic bottle filled most of the way with perlite., added water.
I’ll report back in a few weeks to see if its actually worked. My record for getting roses to root is about 1 in 8, slightly better than my results with our Ceanothus, which is notoriously hard to propagate. That’s more like 1 in 16. (I had a lot of room for cuttings!) Which reminds me, I need to trim it back before it starts budding or I’ll have to wait till late summer. It’s grown far enough thru our fence to make it difficult to get out of the car without scratching something. I should have lots of cuttings from that process to try again. I had three survive over the past attempts and two of them are going great guns at friend’s house.
I have seeds from a poblano pepper and some squash seeds drying in the greenhouse. I will probably plant those tomorrow. The overnight lows are still in the low single digits so I’m not seeing a lot of germination going on. I have a couple of tomato plants that are 8 inches tall and I’m ready to put them in the hydroponics. I’ll make some photos of that for you tomorrow as well.
Cheers,
FlashJ
