By Brian Wagner
ONE of the main seasons in rose production is happening right now and will keep our industry busy until mid Autumn – It’s what we call “Budding Season” and for us at Wagner’s Rose Nursery has started only two weeks ago.
Budding is a very specialised and intensive job, that ensures we grow big, strong, healthy plants.
Roses do better when they are budded onto rootstock planted the previous winter – normally Dr Huey and Multiflora – as opposed to their own cuttings, showing more consistent growth and health.
This specific job is done by very high skilled workers coming mainly from Europe, as there are no enough rose budders in Australia.
Every year we need to sponsor our rose budders through an Immigration Agency and we need to prove that their skill is essential for our business: without good budders we couldn’t graft our new plants and, practically, we wouldn’t have our business.
So, the real first stage of our budding season is having the requested Visas and sponsorships for our budders approved, which is always a very complicated process.
This year has been extremely challenging for us – due to all the Covid restrictions and the borders rules changing nearly every week – and we had a huge relief when Samantha and David, our budders coming from UK, finally crossed the SA border and started working, even if in total isolation.
Budding works on a similar principle to grafting but employs a different technique.
An ‘eye’ is removed from a particular rose variety, about 1.5 cm in length. A ‘t-cut’ is then made in the bottom of the rootstock, the bark is opened up and the bud is inserted in behind the bark.
In years gone by raffia, rubber or plastic was used to hold the bud in place. Now we use a ‘patch ‘ – a small piece of rubber that breaks down in ultra violet light which is clipped on tightly with a staple.
After about three weeks the eye will break through the rubber, and the rubber and staple will disintegrate, leaving a new shoot and the beginnings of another healthy rose bush.
As you can imagine it’s an incredibly back breaking job which requires bending right down to the ground to get access to the rootstock. Our two budders do an amazing job working through over 3000 plants a day, often in extreme heat and humidity. We are lucky to have them – they have a very long and consolidated experience and they travel the world following the summers of the Northern and Southern hemisphere. It takes many years of tough, hard work to get to such a level, with very few people in the world sticking at such a hard job.
While Samantha and David are budding for long hours up to 6 days a week, the rest of the nursery is busy collecting bud wood of all the varieties we grow, according to the orders we receive for next winter. Sometimes we don’t have all the varieties available in the field, or the wood is not ready to be cut yet, so we’ll need to go to private or public gardens and cut the wood that will be cleaned, de-thorned and prepared for budding.
More information on www.wagnersrosenursery.com.au
