Chris of newflora said in one of her posts , to pile mulch around canes to create a humid environment to encourage basal breaks .You can also brush the graft with a hard brush to soften the hardened part . Also I read somewhere that adding 1/2 cup Epsom salts dissolved in 1 gallon of water would encourage basals .

I did try these tips on my Plum Perfect rose which was not doing anything . I piled pine needles around it , brushed the graft with a hard BBQ cleaning brush and fed it Epsom Salts . It did eventually start growing .

I also followed Chris advice! But I used worm compost and then mulch. My jasmina shot up 5 breaks! Honestly all the roses I tried it with had at least something. Could have been the spring growth but I was impressed

Adrian, I don't recall ever seeing a basal break until I started using arborist wood chip pine mulch. If there were any, they were few and far between. My roses are going crazy with basal breaks this year. I'm using the mulch for soil health. The new basals are a bonus. The year I used alfalfa tea, I saw more growth, but not more blooms and it didn't seem to affect basals. Just the mulch alone has done wonders for the health on my soil - lots of worms and it releases weeds intact with the roots.

I followed Chris' advice too! I used mulch they all had new basal breaks.

Hard pruning to get rid of old canes and blind shoots usually results in basal breaks. Midge damage creates a lot of blind shoots.

Chris also said to prune down low to encourage low branching. I did it on some Kordes roses, and it worked for a bushier shrub.