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How to Grow Roses from Cuttings Off Your Favorite Varieties
With a few stems from your garden roses and some inexpensive household items, you can propagate new rose plants for your garden.
Benjamin Whitacre is a freelance garden writer who distills personal experiments, archival research, and scientific literature into entertaining, actionable articles for home gardeners.
Updated on April 25, 2023
Reviewed by
Joseph Tychonievich is a gardening expert with two decades of work in horticulture, the author of three gardening books, and known for his deep knowledge of the science behind techniques for successful gardening.
There’s an open secret about roses: they’re not only easy to propagate, but making more of these plants is one of the best, most magical parts of having them around. You could sprout the seeds, but growing roses from cuttings is the easiest way to reproduce your favorite varieties. There are several practical reasons to propagate roses from cuttings. If you have a variety that does especially well in your garden, rooting a few cuttings from that rose provides an inexpensive way to increase your collection. Or you may want to create backups of a rare variety or a family heirloom rose. Homegrown rose cuttings are also great for swapping with other gardeners. Here’s how to grow roses from cuttings successfully, broken down into 10 simple steps.
Best Time to Take Rose Cuttings
You can successfully root rose cuttings any time of the year. But for more consistent results, check the weather forecast. Plan to take your cutting when daytime temperatures are above 55°F and below 90; the ideal is between 70 and 80. That will probably be in spring and fall. It’s also best to take cuttings early in the morning.
Equipment / Tools
- Sharp pruners, scissors, or knife. Disinfect with rubbing alcohol or Lysol.
- A 2.5- to 5-inch-deep pot that drains well. This could be as simple as the cut-off bottom of a plastic milk jug with holes punched in the base.
Materials
- A 50/50 mix of perlite and potting soil. The mix should be sterile and hold roughly an equal amount of air and moisture.
- Rooting hormone. This powder improves your odds of success, but it’s often not necessary. It should always be used on harder-to-root rose types like Damasks, Hybrid Teas, older wood, or winter cuttings.
- A clear cover to hold humidity around the cuttings. You could use the top part of that milk jug, or a 2-liter soda bottle with the base removed. A clear dry cleaning bag propped up with stakes around the pot works well, too.
Instructions
Overall, rose growing from cuttings is a simple process. Whenever you prune your rose plants or cut off the faded flowers, the balance of hormones in the removed stem changes. Under the right conditions, the changes stimulate it to grow roots. The resulting plant is identical to the parent.
Water the Day Before
Healthy, well-hydrated roses root better. Along with making sure to keep the parent plants in good shape through the growing season, water them the day before taking cuttings.
Take Cuttings
Choose stems immediately below flower buds that are just about to open. The second best option is stems beneath flowers that have begun to drop their petals. Aim for cuttings that are 4-8 inches long with three to five nodes (the regular intervals where buds, leaves, and stems emerge). The cut at the base should be about a quarter of an inch below a node and the cut at the top should be about a quarter inch above one. Bonus tip: Heel wood often roots more easily. It’s located at the base of a stem right where it emerges from another stem. Try pulling your stem straight out from where it attaches. Or cut slightly into the older shoot with a sharp knife.
Place Cuttings in Water
Immediately put your cuttings into a container of water out of direct sunlight. Or wrap cuttings in damp paper towels and place them in a cooler. You want to keep the cut stems as hydrated as possible.
Slice Bottom End of Cuttings
Rooting is part of a wound response for roses. Encourage increased rooting by vertically slicing through the green skin on the bottom inch of the cutting. Do this two to four times spaced roughly equally. Or you can gently scrape a strip or two of the green skin on the bottom inch (just don’t remove the skin all the way around the stem). If the variety has large prickles, ripping them from the base also wounds the stem enough to encourage roots to develop.
Dip Cuttings in Rooting Hormone
If using rooting hormone, apply it to about two inches of the base of your cuttings. If you’re trying to grow roses from cuttings without rooting hormones, steps 1-4 are even more important.
Remove Flowers and Most Leaves
Cut off the flower bud or spent flower and all but the top leaf or two. Reduce the top leaves to three or four leaflets total. Slice the bud from the lowest node to encourage roots to grow.
Place Cuttings Into Potting Soil
Stick your rose cuttings about two inches into a container of potting mix. Press the mix around the stem and water thoroughly. Then add your humidity cover and place the pot in a location with indirect sunlight. This could be on a covered porch, on the side of a shed, or under trees. Some people choose to root rose cuttings indoors on a shady windowsill.
Check Cuttings Periodically
If your humidity cover doesn’t have ventilation, lift it briefly a couple of times a week. You shouldn’t need to add more water unless the potting mix seems to be completely drying out. Whenever you’re lifting the cover, check for cuttings that have turned brown all the way to the base and remove them, along with any fallen leaves.
Remove Humidity Cover
Rooting can happen within a couple of weeks, but expect it to take a month or two. When you start to see roots from the side or bottom of the pot and new leaf growth, you can begin to acclimate the new roses outside of the humidity cover. If you rooted several in a single pot, you should carefully repot them into individual containers.
Plant Rooted Cuttings in the Garden
Give your rooted rose cuttings 9 to 12 months to develop enough to plant in your garden. During that time you may want to move them to a slightly larger pot with a 20/80 mix of perlite and potting soil with slow release fertilizer to fuel new growth.
Understanding Rose Cuttings
Cuttings are simply pieces of rose stems taken at different stages of maturity. Some plants are very particular about what type of cutting will root, but roses are fairly flexible. Rose cuttings can be taken from the current year’s new stems at three main growth stages:
- Softwood cuttings, the fastest and easiest to root, are taken in late spring and early summer, when flexible new stems are just beginning to mature. Prime softwood cuttings come from pencil-size stems below rose blooms that have dropped their petals.
- Semi-hardwood cuttings are taken in late summer and early fall, when new stems have partially matured. By this time, the firm stems may have rosehips forming where blooms appeared before.
- Hardwood cuttings, the slowest and most difficult to root, are taken in late fall or early winter, when the year’s new stems have matured, hardened and entered dormancy.
You can improve your success at any growth stage by treating cuttings with rooting hormone to stimulate root development and encourage growth. GardenTech® RootBoost™ Rooting Hormone helps grow new plants from cuttings fast on roses and other favorite plants like African violets, philodendrons, gardenias, coleus, hydrangeas and more.
The best softwood cuttings come from right below fading rose blooms.
Prepping Planting Spots
Working with softwood cuttings allows some flexibility in how and where you place them to root and grow. However, cuttings should be planted right after they’re taken, so prepare your spot in advance. You can stick softwood cuttings straight into a prepared corner of your outdoor garden space or plant them in containers or deep trays instead.
To plant in a garden, choose a spot with bright but indirect light, so cuttings won’t be stressed by too much sun or heat. Northern and eastern exposures are perfect rooting spots. Cultivate the soil in your new propagation bed about 4 to 6 inches deep, so it crumbles easily. If your soil is heavy, incorporate a small amount of sand, so that new roots can penetrate without much effort.
To start your cuttings in a tray or container, plant at least 6 inches deep, so new roots have plenty of growing room. A simple “soil” mix of equal parts coarse sand and perlite or vermiculite works well. Water the mix thoroughly once you’re through.
Rose cuttings can be taken in fall from stems below rosehips that have started to form.
Taking Cuttings From Roses
Weather and other factors can impact when softwood is ready for cutting, and southern regions are very different from northern growing zones. Don’t base your timing strictly on a calendar; look to your roses — and their fading blooms — instead.
Before you begin, gather these basic items:
- A clean, sharp knife or bypass pruners
- A bucket of warm water, to keep cuttings moist
- RootBoost™ Rooting Hormone
- A small dish to hold the rooting hormone for dipping
- A small stick or pencil to make planting holes
Take rose cuttings from strong, healthy plants during morning hours, when they’re well hydrated. Follow these simple steps:
- Choose a stem or stems between a withered bloom and the rose’s woody base. One stem will make several cuttings.
- Remove the bloom and stem tip. Cut at a 45-degree angle, right above the first set of leaves at the top and again above the last set of leaves at the stem’s bottom. Put cut stems in water immediately.
- Cut each stem into 6- to 8-inch lengths, so that each cutting has four “nodes” — that’s where leaves emerge on stems. 1 Keep cuttings moist at all times.
- Remove all the leaves except one set at the top of each cutting. 1 This helps cuttings root and helps you gauge their progress.
- Pour a small amount of RootBoost™ rooting hormone into the dish. Pour only what you need, and discard the excess when you’re done.
- Moisten the cutting’s bottom half, and dip it into the rooting hormone until covered.
- Use a stick or pencil to make a planting hole 3 to 4 inches deep in your rooting bed or container. Make it big enough so you can insert the cutting without brushing off the hormone.
- Stick the cutting into the hole so its bottom half and at least two nodes are covered, 1 and then firm the soil around it.
You can make several cuttings from a single rose stem.
