Kitchen Garden Forum

I have a bunch of roses that have been in a vase in the kitchen for nearly three weeks and are refusing to die. They've been fully open almost all the time and not a petal has dropped although the leaves are brittle. I noticed last night that all 10 of the stems have produced new shoots with lovely new leaves. To pot these up, what length of stem should I leave around the new shoots, and what mix of compost would be best to plant them in?

I've never had roses do this before, although last year a bunch of crysanthemums hung on for weeks before I noticed a mass of roots in the bottom of the vase. Is it something to do with having glass pebbles at the bottom of the vase?

Chantal, share. What else do you do to keep your cut flowers lasting so long? I'm lucky if mine last a week. Never tried glass pebbles.

Don't know what you do about roses. Think some are like apples and grafted onto stock, so I don't know if they'd take if you snipped the flower off and stuck the bottom in some soil.

I don't do anything apart from cut the bottoms off and stick them in a vase.

Hello Chantal old girl, not really sure on this one, but i think i would treat them a bit like hardwood cuttngs. Cut the bottom of the stem off with four or five buds, discard the tops, plant in a free draining compost with the top bud about three quarters of an inch above the compost, keep moist but not soaked. Don't know if this is the best way, but i think that is how i would go about it.

Kind regards the Old Herbaceous.

Theres no fool like an old fool.

Thanks OH, I'll give it a go. If it all works I'll have 10 gorgeous velvet red rose bushes by this time next year (ever the optimist me).