Hi archades,

I am in Mudgee NSW, 'fortuneana', is your best shot, there is one called 'paulistus' ? or commonly called 'swamp rose', give me a couple of hours and I will give more info.

David.

Me again, can you supply some info why you require this type of rootstock ? At this time of year I would think you will not get one, but here is the best chance for next Winter. If you are going to use it as rootstock you will have to be good at propagating and making it survive, it is not an easy one to do deal with, the link below will be your best option, they are call 'Thomas for Roses" and are in South Australia. If you ring them, they are elderly, possibly retiring, Mrs Thomas will answer normally, it is her that I sugest you speak to.

chrome-extension://oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm/http://www.roses.hains.com.au/Thomas%20For%20Roses%20Catalog.pdf

This is thier entire catalogue, thier phone no and details are on it. There are two other alternatives in WA, but I think they might have shut up shop, they are Melville's and the Swiss Rose Garden. Let me know how you go please.

David,

I'd like to try grafting some existing roses I have here and it seemed fortuneana was the most popular type of rootstock to use. Are there easier to propagate ones? Would seeds be better?

For me it's just a hobby, I like to try various things and don't like throwing out prunings of my prettier plants so I need something to do with them. Tried the newspaper burrito bag method on some of this years prunings, they looked great at 2 weeks with a fair bit of callousing but I left them to 4 weeks and I think the newspaper had too much water n rotted many of them. A few survive and trying to get them to root right now.

archades, what roses do you have ?. roseseek is the expert with the Burrito Method, if you want directions with this speak to him(Kim).

As for rootstock, are you going to try this in pots or directly in your garden beds/soil ? There are two others that are used in Australia, 'Dr. Huey' and one of the forms of multiflora.

@ Kim/roseseek, how would some 'banksia' go ?

Probably pots, running out of garden space.

I have a 3 Harry Wheatcroft, Princess de Monaco, Remember me, Candy Stripe, Double Delight, Peace, Children's Rose, Betwitched, Blue Moon, Peter Frankenfold, Olympic Torch, and 2 Granada in my Hybrid Teas.

I have 2 miniatures from Bunnings, and 1 Floribunda "Red Gold" as well.

I really really like the multiple colour ones and striped ones. My first Harry Wheatcroft I planted last aug or september, from a pot plant bought from the store has had about 130-150 blooms until about a month or two ago when I gave it a hard prune. And a month after that it was full n bushy again with another 20 blooms on it, is that normal? It's an insane but good plant.

Wow! Harry Wheatcroft won't perform like that here in California! That sounds marvelous. I haven't experimented with Banksiae yet, David, but I see no reason why it wouldn't perform similarly to Fortuniana. I'd wondered about it and inquired on the Rose Hybridizers Association. Warren Millington responded that Banksiae is used for rose standards in China. So, why wouldn't it be as good for bush stocks? I've been waiting for my Banksiae seedling to throw out the type of growth necessary for stocks. The only other Banksiae I had available was an old commercially produced one and I have no hopes it might not be Mosaic Virus infected. The seedling shouldn't be.

This is my first Harry Wheatcroft on August 3, 2015 when I finally managed to get the courage to give it a very hard pruning, 2 thirds gone and outward facing buds and I tried to make it so the buds would grow outward to promote airflow as we get blackspot a lot here. This one had 1/3rd blackspot on the foliage before pruning. Up to this point it had about 130-150 blooms I am guessing, every few weeks it would throw out 20-25 new blooms. It also sent out a lot of new shoots (I think they're called suckers?) from the graft, and I accidentally took 2 off last year before I learned it wasn't the rootstock shooting, oops :(.

Same plant, Harry Wheatcroft, September 13th 2015 so 6 weeks, and it has been blooming for about a week or two so maybe 1 month? It had 20-22 buds on it on this day. I started a 2 week alternating fungicide rotation, the rains also started but so far very little black spot. I swear the leaves are much bigger this time around, very shiney too.


It does have some that go the darker orange + pink and some go lighter orange and pink, same markings, size. And that's Alphonse Anderson Azalea on the far right. Using sugar cane mulch, blood and bone for fertilizer and I also use Mychor fungi powder on the roots and a product called Bactivate (5 different bacteria) in the soil with perlite because we get very heavy rains (100mm in an hour sometimes) in the monsoon and cyclones. I will have a hell of a lot of stakes tying this plant down in a cyclone, it's my favourite. Also use Seasol on them too, and sheep manure as top dressing. Sunlight is about 7am till 6pm for this rose in summer, at midday it loses 2-3 from that shrub behind it in (which is due for a trim!) winter/spring.

This year has been quite dry compared to most years, not sure if it will do better in the wetter years but I have automatic irrigation on it. Soil was bought for the raised bed, underneath is clay which I worked a bit to free it up a lot, it has about 60-70cm depth of decent, loose-ish soil before it hits major clay. The top 30-40cm has the real nice organic rich soil.

I had 200 cuttings but 150+ were lost due to too much time in the baggie I think, I was so sad when I saw them after 4 weeks! I will definitely set a limit of 2 weeks next time.

Beautiful! "Suckers" are new growth from the stock beneath the bud union. If the new growth comes from the bud union, they are "basal breaks", new growth from the base of the plant. Yes, those are the ones you don't want to remove. It seems, from your report and photos, keep doing what you're doing as nothing appears broken. Don't "fix" anything, other than to limit time in the bags to two weeks! Good luck!

Thanks :D

You're welcome!