Tried rooting rose cuttings in plain water instead of soil and got way better results

I know everybody in this group swears by soil or perlite for rooting cuttings, but I had a bunch of Knock Out roses last spring and decided to just stick them in a mason jar with tap water on my kitchen windowsill. I swapped the water every 3 days and basically forgot about them for two weeks. When I checked, 6 out of 10 had roots over an inch long with no rot or mold at all. I moved them to pots after that and they took off fine. I guess the constant oxygen from fresh water made a difference for me. Has anyone else here had luck with water rooting when the standard methods kept failing?

3 comments

3 Comments

emery_flores7d ago

Oh boy, that matches my experience exactly! I tried water rooting with some old rose cuttings a few years back and was shocked when half of them sprouted roots while the ones I babied in soil just rotted away. There's something about fresh water that really works for certain plants, I think people write it off too quick without giving it a fair shot.

hannah_perry7d ago

Tried this with some hydrangea cuttings last fall and had the opposite problem - got roots but they were all soft and mushy when I went to pot them up. Maybe the rose wood is just tougher than what I was working with.

thompson.reese6d ago

See but I think the mushy root problem with hydrangeas is actually a sign that the water method was working TOO well for them. Soft roots mean they were really taking up water, but then when you potted them up the soil mix probably held too much moisture compared to what they were used to. You gotta slowly transition water-rooted cuttings by letting them sit in a really light mix and watering less often at first. I've killed plenty of cuttings that way too until I figured out the gradual switch.