Annie Get Your Gloves

An excellent question, and one certain to be burning in your mind. If it isn't, feel free to skip this entire section.

When a rose, or any other plant for that matter, is injured, the plant tries to repair the damage. Despite what we may think of our delicate and ladylike beauties out in the garden, the rose has but one purpose on life, and that is to live long and prosper. To a rose, prospering involves making sure it survives to pass its genes along to the next generation. If a rose's cane is injured in some way, it will generally callous over with thicker tissue/bark to prevent further injury of that part. If it is severed completely, the cane will send chemical signals to the cut section that encourage it to root. This is an extreme oversimplification, and perhaps we'll get more into this at a later time, but that's basically what goes on.

In air layering, we will take advantage of this tendency and get our cane to root.

So, go get your gloves, get your other supplies (x-acto blade or short sharp knife, plastic sheeting or plastic bags, sphagnum moss, peat pellets or seed starting soil), twist ties, and let's go air layer a rose.

Step One:

Choose a nice, plump, green cane that has born flowers already.

Select a spot near a bud eye, and either snap off the thorns in the vicinity or snip the points off. You will be working "up close and personal" with the cane, and unless you are thornproof, you'll want to clear the playing field of these hinderances.

Make a cut below the bud eye (See Figure 1) you have chosen, and ring the cane. Go completely around the cane, in other words.
If you've already practiced making your cuts on another piece of cane, you'll have a good idea of how deeply you need to go. You don't want to sever the cane, but you do want to cut deeply enough so that the bark and underlying green tissue peels off during Step Four.

Step Two:

Make another cut, again completely ringing the cane, about one inch below the first one. (Figure 2)

Step Three:

Make a third cut, this time vertically, from the bottom of the first cut to the top of the second cut.

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