I have always had good luck rooting dormant cuttings outside. I have:
Cl. Cecile Brunner
New Dawn (re-blooming version)
Abraham Darby
Tamora
Pat Austin
Marie Pavie
Prairie Harvest
Tiffany

I'm looking for HT's, florabundas, bucks, climbers.

Maureen - I'm always willing to ship out cuttings. I won't be able to offer any until around June/July, however, as everyone is dormant for me and I don't prune at all in the winter. All I ask for is shipping reimbursement. I can't root cuttings to save my own life.

Thanks Skiekitty. I would never have thought to try cuttings in winter, but someone told me they had good luck with it and i tried it one year...just have to make sure the ground isn't frozen....and i have 4 out of 5 varieties root right in the ground. the only thing i did was make a hole with a pencil....dip cutting in hormone powder..insert in hole and press down soil...so easy.

What roses do you grow?

Your birds are so pretty,... i love birds. I don't have any indoors but i feed all the outside birds...so beautiful. I love to hear them chirp.

Maureen, what zone are you in? I never thought about putting cuttings right into the ground in winter! Do you mulch over the top of the cutting? wondering if this would work in zone 6/7.
Most of my roses are still fully leafed out. Possibly they aren't dormant yet...it's been an incredibly warm winter. We got 3" of rain yesterday so that's a blessing.

HI Cindi = i'm in zone 7, LI NY. No, i've never mulched over the cuttings. Just took cuttings, dipped in rooting hormone and stuck in ground. Watered a tiny bit... That's it. Come spring / summer you can tell which ones took and which are dead. It's really easy.

Maureen, I think I'll try that. Did you move your plants once they were well rooted? I have family in Smithtown LI so I am familiar with your climate. Wish we could grow azaleas here to the enormous sizes they grow there.

How exciting, I'll have to try this! II am a zone colder than you, but it has been a mild winter so far - 50'F today if you can believe it! The only roses that I have been able to root to date are the ones that root themselves where they touch the ground - like baby blanket and roseberry blanket. Also, a bird planted a wild rose in my garden (and another in a wintersowing container). I could encourage more blanket roses for trade later in the year.

I am a rose newbie, can someone give me a link to rooting rose cuttings?

Thanks,
Teresa in KY

Teresa, I'm not sure we have one. We're such a foolishly extravagant bunch that we usually buy roses rather than taking the trouble to root cuttings. Maybe someone else can remember a thread of that nature, but here's the method I use in most cases:

I wait until the rose is producing buds and I then cut off a 6-8 inch lengh of stem. I choose a stem with a bud at the tip because those are full of vitality. I cut off the bud, so that the cutting won't waste energy on making the bud bloom, and I remove the leaves from the bottom three or four growing nodes. I dip the bottom end of the stem in growth hormone and plunge the cutting into the ground, deep enough that those three or four nodes are under the soil. If possible, I grow the cutting in the ground under the mother plant or very close to the mother plant (on the assumption that it must be a good place for this particular cultivar to grow). If that's not possible, I grow the cutting in a 1-gallon container filled with high-grade potting soil. Keep the soil in the container moist, but not soggy, and keep the container in dappled shade at first. You can move it into full sun after it starts producing new growth.

One thing I might add to that is that you can make the cutting a protective "greenhouse" by covering it with a 1 or 2 liter soda bottle with its bottom cut out.

Zuzu, that's such a clear, complete and concise explanation that I think you should create a FAQ or sticky for it!
Porkpal, we don't drink pop, so I use the plastic bottles from "Simply Lemonade" or Limeade. They are a sturdy plastic and anchor better. the top opening is larger, also.

I agree with Cindi - Those instructions should be put in a sticky along with pictures for dummies like me. :D I think I'm going to try this method. I've tried the baggie method, but it just molded & was gross.

Skiekitty, the protective "greenhouse" mentioned by Porkpal is absolutely necessary in dry climates such as Colorado, or you'll just end up with a shriveled stick. It keeps the air humid enough for the cutting to stay viable until it has roots. But it absolutely cannot have any direct sunlight in our climate or it will cook. This is the simple way I used to root cuttings over 40 years ago. The baggie method works well for me but I've been doing it for 30 years and have rooted thousands of roses (and other things) that way. I used to teach classes in rose propagation.

Would a milk jug be OK? It's not clear, translucent, but I think that would help too.

sad thing is that I can set up a saltwater aquarium in less than an hour, but I can't even root coleuses. But I've been doing aquariums for 14 years and gardening for 3. Guess that's the difference, huh.

I wandered a teeny bit yesterday (painfully, very very painfully.. fighting a cold & Tuesday night at the gym killed me) the front yard. I didn't pull back any mulch, but I don't think I lost any roses in the front yard ( ). This winter was very short and too dry. Gonna have to start watering soon (Sunday I'm planning on watering). Many of my roses don't even show any winterkill on their canes... Mardi Gras is green from crown to dirt, as is Blue Bayou, Judy Garland, & JFK. Gonna have fun trimming as soon as my forsythias decide to do SOMETHING. When I was at the zoo on 2/10, I saw that the lilacs were starting to leaf out, but mine are still waiting (my area is usually about 3-5 weeks behind downtown due to being on the plains & about 1000ft higher). I wonder if I should try to root any of my cuttings that are 100% green?

What brand/type of rooting hormone does everyone use?

I always had the very best luck with rose cuttings that were taken from a stem that had at least color in the bud, and even better if the bloom was spent.

A translucent milk jug is great, especially since you can start leaving the cap off when the cutting has started growing to start getting it acclimated to our dryness. And yes, I'm sure that experience makes a huge huge HUGE difference. I've never done salt water, but I've been doing fresh water aquariums for almost 45 years and I'm sure it's why I had no problems at all starting a water garden, while friends of mine just had one problem after another with their fish.

I have quite a bit of dieback since those horrific winds a little while ago. Those 70 plus mph winds sucked the moisture out of things and blew over a 20 year old spruce tree. Jeanne Lajoie is leafing out.

I've always used rootone, but probably more for the fungicide in it than for rooting hormone. I've had good luck without it as well.

Tabby - Yea, you guys on the western side of town got it a lot worse than I did on the eastern plains. The winds were bad, but my yard was still 100% buried in about a ft of snow, so I didn't have any problems with the drying out part. My Wate's Gold pine was blown over, but I checked & the roots hadn't been exposed, so I just pulled it back upright & tied it to the fence. It should be fine. Didn't lose any branches off my silver maple, so I know the winds weren't all that bad here... probably 20-30mph. I noticed that most of my columbines that survived are starting to peep out and a few of my miniature roses are starting to leaf out. I think I'm gonna try it with a milkjug or two. Couldn't hurt! Where would I get Rootone?

Call around, but Rootone should be available at almost any large nursery such as Paulinos. There was a liquid rooting hormone that people liked a lot better, but I can't remember the name of it. Hopefully somebody will post the name of it.

And there may be better ones out now. It's been a while since I did a lot of that kind of thing. I got sick and had to slow down.

With this really mild weather, I've been doing a lot of pruning recently, even things that I'd normally prune later on... I stuck a bunch of 'Zepherine Drouhine' cuttings when I got it back under control last month, and it looks like most have rooted! I did the bottle-protector over one of them, but the others just got shoved into deck containers. I have lavenders growing "for real" in those pots, so I'll need to repot the rose cuttings this spring... it was a total experiment, and I really didn't expect them to make it LOL.

I pruned an overgrown 'Knockout' rose a couple days ago... had a pile of prunings, then considered that maybe I should try rooting a few... they were a little wilted when I got back to them the next day, so I selected a few and trimmed them up, then put them in a jar with some water. They look pretty good tonight, so I'll try to get them stuck in pots of moist potting mix tomorrow.

I know a lot of roses are grafted, but I think 'ZD' and "Knockouts" are commonly grown as own-root roses, although I'm not really sure about Knockouts. ?

Knock Outs usually aren't grafted. They don't really need it. Zephirine Drouhin is usually not grafted either, but I have two grafted Zephirines and one own-root one, and the grafted ones are much bigger and bloom more often.

Thanks! Who knows, maybe I'll have a little herd of knockouts to put along the back side of the tree line... hoping to eventually win against the poison ivy back there and plant, and strategically placed thorny plants & brush piles help direct any bike or foot traffic along just a couple of paths so everything doesn't get run over. It's a corn field behind us now, but eventually it'll be developed as a housing community. Trying to plan ahead! There are some places where a tough Knockout is just the ticket. I have a couple of tough climbers to put back there somewhere also.