I don't know -- we don't propagate mosses, because they don't work here.
But for the things we DO propagate, tho we use misters, they only go off every couple hours.
One thing we've found is, we're propagating in transparent plastic cups.
We can absolutely SEE if roots are there, and we don't take them out until there are.

Barbara Oliva told us once that if we fail to root something, it's because we are using
the wrong method, or at the wrong time, FOR THAT ROSE.
Maybe this is the wrong time or method for your mosses.

Jeri

Thanks for the rapid response Jeri.

I've heard mosses are notoriously hard to propagate via cuttings. The roots are clearly visible through the transparent plastic cups before removal from the mister. Maybe they're just too wimpy/finicky to make it. I was hoping there might be some suggestion of a fungicidal drench or some other quick fix.

Black from the bottom up usually means too much water...

Wilting leaves indicates that the root system isn't strong enough yet...

I would assume that they need stronger roots (longer in the misters) and then perhaps holes in the cups once they come out?

some roses are finicky...

It sounds like your plants are suffering the same fate often seen in the "Baggie" method..it must be really shocking to go from a rain forest to a desert-being misted a few times a day is not really going to do the trick. A timer that will mist in short bursts every 10min or so probably would help. Gilmore makes an inexpensive one that you can get at Home centers-naturally there are more expensive fancy ones. A cold frame would help in lieu of that. It keeps the humidity up like a small greenhouse..you gradually open the lid. Mosses are hard. I have found the repeaters are the easiest to root. sometimes it takes dormant propagation. I also find it discouraging to find my well rooted plants will just up and die on me.

patricia

You know what we use? One of those inexpensive patio misting systems, on a battery-operated timer.
Works like a charm in our dinky little greenhouse.

When plants come out of there, and are potted up to 1-G, they spend a day or so in a shaded area outside the greenhouse before being moved to the "pot ghetto."

Jeri

Mosses are hard as are many of the old European Roses. However it does sound like you are drowning them. Black from the bottom up is for us an indication of that.

Once our cuttings have any kind of roots at all they are out of the misters ASAP and treated more like plants meaning we water them instead of misting them..

They are still in the propagation house but in an area where they do not get mist but the humidity is still high.

I've always been told that once a rose has roots get it out the mister and treat it like a grown up plant.

Paul

Thanks for the responses.

Lots of food for thought. I have had such good luck with a wide variety of roses with my past methods and this moss thing is getting to me.

Patriciae, I am currently looking into the timer thing for my misting. There is so much waste with continuous misting, as well as the shock involved when the rooted cuttings are removed. I want to check out the timer thing and see if I could get it to work in an outdoor situation.

Jeri, the patio mister thing sounds like something that might work for me. What size cups and what is your propagation medium?

Paul, I also have always pulled upon the first sign of root. I am currently trying leaving the mosses under the mist a few days longer, then onto my humid parrot house under lights for a couple of weeks.

Has anyone had any experience with Rootshield or Mycostop biofungicides?

I mist out in the open in my greenhouse. The mist is controlled by a Mist-a-Matic timer ... which is the best about-$200 I think I've ever spent. Now I don't have to worry about whether the cuttings are getting too much water or too little water. The screen on the timer turns the mist on and off in response to evaporation, so everything stays consistent.

I take my cuttings out of the mist after I see roots on the sides of the clear rooting pots, and I repot them into slightly larger pots to grow on. The media 50/50 perlite and peat-based potting mix (Promix, right now).

One morning earlier this summer, I went out the check the greenhouse and it looked like the misters had been on all night. There was some sort of an electrical hiccup, my husband said. I had a couple of empty plastic bins under my bench .... they were full of water! It was an eye-opener.

Connie

Connie, I really am not sure how the mist timers work. I wonder if one like yours could be rigged to use in an outdoor setting? It would require short intervals (heat and wind here). Also, what size pots/medium do you use when they are under the mist?

lise

Scroll down on my blog to a propagation post earlier this month to see photos of the set up I use this year and the one I used last year. Last year was my first year with mist, and it was a bit confusing to me until I had someone take me through the process. After that, it was really simple. Contact me off 'board and I'll be happy to work you through any questions you have.

Connie

Here is a link that might be useful: blog

What size cups and what is your propagation medium?

*** Cups: 16-oz - 20-oz transparent plastic cups, purchased in big packages from Costco or Sams Club.
(But he drills holes in the bottoms)
Iced-Coffee cups from McDonalds work well. :-)

Medium -- He uses some Supersoil, with added perlite. Nothin' fancy.
He uses both willow water and Nature's Nog (a liquid kelp stuff that's really great).

Jeri

I had a mental glitch..it is a Melnor timer(was 3060)..Battery operated like Jeri said-new batteries once a year..under $30 when I got mine and has a built in misting cycle of 2 min every 10 min's or you can program your own. I combined it with the same sort of patio mister that Jeri uses-there are misting heads with a finer mist(use less water and the particles of water stay in the air longer) but I have iron in my tap water and they clog too fast. I also have a Mist a Matic that I can use with a pump to recycle rain water but they both work equally well. You can get most of this stuff on line from Charlies Greenhouse...they even have a set up they sell. I live near by and get my equipment cheap from the yearly August warehouse sale-lucky me.

patricia

Like Patricia's, our water is heavily mineral-laden, and those fine nozzles do clog.
DH pulls clogged nozzles out of the line, and replaces them with clear ones.
The clogged nozzles go into a little jar of white vinegar, which dissolves the clog.
They go back in service as needed.

Jeri

I'm sad to say I am going to lose another cutting that rooted some time back. Was waiting for leaves, some tiny ones just came out, others started, wham, it's starting to rot bottom up. The medium was turning green (mold or fungus, others aren't like that).

So I got another cutting that had barely rooted but was starting new leaves and potted it up in sterilized stuff (all but for the potting soil), put a 2 liter soda bottle over it w/cap on for now, will watch it, hope for the best, and wean the cap off, then the bottle, then try to harden off outside and get in the ground by winter this time rather than keeping in the sunroom (depends on how it seems to be doing).

You are right, rooting is not even the half of it getting them from a cutting to a thriving plant in the ground.

Another one the roots are coming through the holes but no sign of leaves. Do I dare get it out of there and pot it up as above?

I'm stubborn and am going to stay with the storage box for now, must be doing something right for them to root fast, but now know the medium was too wet. Plus I've got it so humid in there, the medium soaks up moisture to max. And it's getting green and yucky in the bottom.

So I stick another cutting, another bad one with leaves chewed up about 4 days ago. It had broken off a very fragile plant so I decided what the heck.

So Jeri is right. You have to get just the right moisture balance. After the browning cutting bites the dust, I may take the last two out and sterilize everything again, can't hurt at this point.

I really like doing it in the little square pots. The cutting came out nice and clean with no breakup of medium, always scoop a cavity when I pot up.

I may try more outdoors another time, but this is what is for now and have no patience after what I went through getting my system set up and running to start a misting system in the foreseeable future.

Bottom line: Don't get the medium too wet and get the best quality cuttings possible.

And I guess I'm not so wise after all. Very humbling and disappointing.

I tried for years, with a very low success rate.

We got a couple of helpful suggestions from friends, and then DH got interested, and started really working at it.
I am slapdash.
He is an engineer, and very methodical in his work.
He is having an astonishing (to me, anyhow) rate of success.

But at that, we can already see that we get more success at some times of the year than others.
That matches up with some information Bob Martin provided in an article.

Eventually, you'll find the key to success.

Jeri

I hope you're right, Jeri. These were struck the first couple weeks in June so would be spring cuttings right after blooming.

OK, I'll confess. Before I understood about patents, I did one Charlotte, it rooted and grew in record time, gave it to a neighbor, won't do any more patented ones, matter of honor.

Yeah, engineers have exacting, methodical minds; my father was one but he wasn't into any of this. He did get things to grow well though, transplants from the wild like jack-in-the-pulpit (probably protected now), peonies, some odd native plants and a dogwood I gave them, just about anything grew for him. I wish I could remember the names of the many he did, no rooting involved but transplanting is tricky, too. With cuttings, I try to do it right but it gets tedious, and I just want to get it over with. I do follow the procedure to the letter I've set for myself, however.

Since I'm getting good rooting rates now, I need to work on the rest. The ones that keep their leaves seem to do the best the fastest.

If I insist on using the box, I think the sooner I get them through there, the better. Basically any I've gotten so far are just plain luck. But so far I've eventually gotten what I wanted.

I can order a couple more Gruss next year, that's what I'm after and have poor stock to work with. There are others I could do that are healthier looking but not any patented ones, no room for any more at the moment. I want two exact clones of the one Gruss that bloomed so well this spring. If I order new ones from ARE there's a good chance they would still be a good match. Which I will do next spring if I lose these and might be healthier than what I'm working with except mine have acclimated to the climate here. And it's a bit cheaper.

My two RDV's out there, well one is making a nice comeback, the other just sulks, tiny. If any, just a touch of BS. This is a very bad year for it with all the rain. Even Charlotte has gotten some. I don't worry about it for now.

The one I potted up is an unknown white, seem to root fairly readily though. I have two out there, but would still hate to lose it. Wanted it for insurance since the lady asked me not to take any more this year, used one of my tiny ones. If the things start suckering like I think they are prone to, I may regret all my fussing over that one.

How large are the root systems of the rosebushes that you removed from the mister?
In the mister, the leaves are uptaking water from the mist, outside they are not. If the roots are not long enough this sudden change could be killing your new rosebushes.
If the roots are brown, they are dying of root rot.

Lux.

p. lisette, please ignore my first posting, I was in a hurry, this is the final draft:
I had several newly rooted rosebushes that died in the manner in which you described, browning, then blackening from the base and dying upwards.
I kept a rose rooting jounal so I could learn from my mistakes, and went on to successfully root more than 80 rosebushes from 14 classes.
When I pulled the dying newly rooted rosebushes out of the soil, and clipped an inch from the tips of the roots, to inspect their health, the roots were brown and mushy, a sign of root-rot. Learning from this, I suggest that:
If the roots of your dead Moss roses were mushy, and/or brown on the inside of the roots,
1. Let the Moss roses grow in the mister until their root systems are very well developed. I would keep them there until the roots were at least 4 inches long by 3 inches wide at the root tip area. This will enable them to take in enough water, by theirselves out in the garden.
2. Don't mist rosebushes after they've been put in the ground. They only needed misting in the mister because their root systems were not well developed enough to hydrate them.
2. Don't overwater after they've been planted in the garden. I would check the ground to be sure that the soil 4 inches below the soil is:
- dry enough so it doesn't easily compress into a ball, or drip.
- and water when the soil feels moist enough to feel cool and damp, 4 inches below the soil surface.

Hope this helps,
luxrosa

I too have problems with many roses, but it looks like any variety will root if I just keep on trying. I use the very simple plastic-over-pot-method. As long as the cutting roots it usually goes well. The problem is to get cutting to root, they are not all ways that willing. When roots are sticking out of the bottom of the pot I cut a corner of the plastic bag to let it gradually harden of for life outside the humid plastic bag. I usually use 5-6 days or so for the hardeing off process. I have best result in July and August when the old garden roses root most easily (at least under conditions I have here), even the mosses and centifolias. I often use strong canes new that year, but smaller ones works too. It is important that a certain degree of hard wood has had time to develop. Very soft new growth needs optimal conditions in every way to root and grow strong enough for free air, so I discard tip of canes and often use wood that are flowering or just about to finish flowering. I also like to use micorrizae fungi on the new roots as soon as possible as it makes a big difference on these tender plants. I also water with a weak solution of liquid fertilizer very early, about half strength, often organic and low on the nitrogen. I place the cuttings outside in full shade until they are rooted and hardened off. Actually getting the cuttings to root is the problem with this method, when plants show signs of growing very few of them are lost. Next crucial face is surviving winter, most do, but it is very important that they stay moist and are proteced against wind and sun in periods of frost.