I've grown a lot of roses, done rooted cuttings, done crosses and seedlings but I've never done any grafting. For some reason I've always been hesitant about it. This spring my pretty rose tree, Baby Blanket, really took a hit from winter. It was in the shed but with as cold as it was for as long as it was that graft at the top really, even though insulated and wrapped, was pretty much frozen off. It did have one fairly decent cane left and one not so good cane so we knew the roots and trunk had to still be viable.

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I was planning on just rooting some cuttings of Baby Blanket and tossing the tree. But my brother, Al, had other ideas. He loves polyanthas and we have 3 now and at my show Saturday he begged a cutting for another one off of a friend. So he took the four poly cuttings that he had and grafted them to the tree!

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So with luck I'll have a Baby Blanket, Verdun, Zenaitta, Blanche Neige and Wings Dings rose tree!

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I think I'll still root some Baby Blanket cuttings, just in case...