Rebekah said:
Yes I do too Sunnyvalley! I was going to offer seeds/ pollen to swap if you are interested but I'm not sure about shipping to Sweden?
@Rebekah - I live in Switzerland but you confusion is understandable
As a born-and-bred South African, I also got them mixed up until I met my DH (absolute ions ago).
Just a hint: some of us have published our names, visible on the right of every post. Mine is Sharlene and I live in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland.
Shipping might be a little difficult to Switzerland but thanks for the offer. It would be fantastic to find somebody closer to home who dabbles in hybridizing so that we could exchange seeds or pollen. There don’t seem to be many people here interested making their own crosses.
@gemini_sage
Neal, I only have very limited (first year) experience grafting onto older established root stock. I found it to be a little more difficult because the bark at the base was really thick and brittle and it split while I was inserting the bud eye. Typically, it only takes one bud eye to produce a new plant but I grafted two on opposite sides of the older root stock in the hope that at least one will take. I will only be able to report back next year on how or if the grafts were successful.
For me, it is definitely easier to graft onto younger root stock. There are a couple of vendors here who offer bare-root root stock for delivery in March. These are year-old ‘seedlings’ with a ‘neck’ diameter of 6-8mm which increases a little by the time it comes to grafting season in August. I only use one bud eye when I graft these.
The other option would be to only leave one strong cane from your established plant and graft a standard. Of course you will have to cut out / remove all the bud eyes along the cane and will probably have to battle with suckers for a while but if you are prepared to do that, I can almost guarantee success! If you do decide to graft a couple of florist roses, winter protection if advisable and most have performed very well here. So far mine have seemed to adjust.
Hope your sport on Golden Fairy Tale proves stable and that you are able to root some cuttings.
