How to Graft Roses Onto Rootstock

Rootstock stems can be ordered online or gathered from healthy wild roses. Garden roses grafted onto locally suitable rootstock produce suckers that can be rooted for a supply of rootstock. Hobbyists pot the rooted understock and graft desirable garden rose varieties onto it to create a brand new rosebush. Select only rose varieties that are no longer under patent; wild roses and commonly used rootstock roses are not patented.

Bypass garden clippers
Budding knife or scalpel
No. 64 rubber bands
Potted rooted rootstock in 2-gallon pots
Rose stems
Damp paper towels

Instructions

- 1
  Select and clip stems from healthy rose plants. Choose stems that are actively growing and that have terminated in a rose. Find the axil buds, the spots where new flowering stems form, along the stems.
- 2
  Clean the cutting blade with rubbing alcohol or diluted household bleach. Select a plump axil bud and cut it out from a stem, including a small portion of its underlying wood. Use an upward slicing motion, guiding the blade away from the body. Wrap the bud in a slightly dampened paper towel.
- 3
  Make a “T” slice in the skin of the rootstock. Cut deeply enough to penetrate the skin and just hit the underlying wood. Peel the skin carefully away from the underlying wood without removing it.
- 4
  Insert the bud into the opened “collar” of the rootstock skin with the bud wood against the rootstock wood. Close the flaps over the axil bud.
- 5
  Wrap the wound closed using a cut rubber band. Tie the rubber band snugly and securely around the rootstock stem.
- 6
  Check the wound in two weeks. Remove the rubber band when the bud union is healed.
- 7
  Cut off the excess rootstock above the bud union when the bud is actively growing.

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