Hi,Doris. I hope you enjoy ATP.
Zone 10b sounds pretty hot. Maybe they dried out too quickly? Shade or some wind barrier or misting the cuttings might have helped.
I understand that the drainage and moisture level in the rooting medium may be critical for rooting some plants. When the rooting medium is too wet or too fine, the stems and roots don't get enough air. If the cuttings were not all ready to root, they might rot before the roots develop. Rooting hormones should encourage the cuttings to develop roots faster than they might otherwise.
Other plants can pretty much just be "stuck in the ground" and they are likely to root. I wouldn't even guess what kind of rooting medium is best for roses (coarse sand? fine peat? Perlite? Vermiculite?)
Personally, I find rooting cuttings (especially hardwood cuttings) to be the hardest gardening task I ever tried. I never got a single root on hardwood, and even softwood cuttings rot on me before they root. So "zero for ten" isn't bad, especially if you didn't practice first on easier plants.
I've read that many plants root easiest from young, actively growing shoots, but I don't know if that applies to roses.
One book had many clever schemes like pruning a plant severely one fall, so that it sent out a lot of tender suckers early the next spring, which made good material for cuttings by mid-spring. (Again, that might not work for roses.)
>> exactly as I was told from a self professed rose expert. ;-)
This place has many REAL experts. With your help describing your situation, they can make suggestions.
I just wish there was some way they could have reached right through the computer monitor and checked the moisture level in my seedling trays three years ago so they could have told me "that's MUCH too wet!!"
