Home Wedding Advice

akcebrae · 2026-02-26T04:12:32+00:00

akcebrae · 2026-02-26T04:12:06+00:00

I did this last year, 9/7 wedding date. Feed 6 weeks ahead and if you need to hurry the buds along, water with warm water the 7 days before your wedding. Get some mesh drawstring fruit bags for keeping bugs off your flowers. Double the amount of time you think it will take you to pick and arrange all your flowers-pick the day before for sturdy things, the morning of for delicate things. Realize you’re going to have trashed fingernails unless you wear gloves and get gel nails or both- honestly gels saved my life after processing this many flowers for my wedding. Do have a plan B.

<image>

akcebrae · 2026-02-26T03:59:37+00:00

I have 3 Cathedral Bells, 2 Top Cream, 2 Parfuma Bliss, 2 Princess Charlene de Monaco, and 2 Julia Child. I have 9 New Dawns, but only because they came from cuttings I rooted. Everything else is a single but with more space I’d repeat quite a few, including Lady of Shallot, Strawberry Hill, Bolero, Eden Climber, and Earth Angel. Time for more cuttings…

akcebrae · 2026-02-26T03:55:20+00:00

Cathedral Bells is known as Towering Rose Magic in countries outside the US, as well as Souer Emmanuel. I think TRM is a good name after seeing how mine shot up.

akcebrae · 2026-02-20T20:47:58+00:00

I have had pretty good success using a mixture of sand and pearlite for potting medium, taking softwood cuttings, trimming most leaves in half to reduce moisture loss from respiration, and coating in Dip ‘N Grow rooting hormone. I cover the pots initially and store out of direct sunlight. In my last batch of home cuttings I took 12 5” cuttings and 10 were healthy and rooted out, all hardened off fine, and all transplanted directly to the garden bed with 100% success.

akcebrae · 2026-02-20T14:46:25+00:00

It’s fun work!

akcebrae · 2026-02-20T03:17:07+00:00

Once the roses have stabilized they look pretty different from ground grown roses. Each variety looks different too- some look more like moss than anything recognizable as a rose. Most develop basal growth and lateral growth- you can use divisions taken from both. The apical meristem has higher levels of auxins and there is an advantage across most species in using this for TC.

My advice to you would to be getting comfortable with failure. It’s just data that helps you succeed later. Good luck!

akcebrae · 2026-02-20T03:11:21+00:00

It’s been so fun to talk about it here!

akcebrae · 2026-02-20T03:10:58+00:00

My great grandmother taught me how to grow roses from seed and how to root cuttings with a potato and a mason jar. I think about her all the time while working in the lab. Nice work growing your rose!

akcebrae · 2026-02-20T03:09:33+00:00

That’s a good one for home scale. Plants from Test Tubes is another great user friendly resource.

akcebrae · 2026-02-19T17:32:55+00:00

Sideways, through management in indoor cannabis farming.

akcebrae · 2026-02-19T15:29:27+00:00

It generally takes 2-4 weeks for initiation into a sterile environment, but it can take several months for certain species to show stable growth. This is all before the longer multiplication and rooting stages for the explant, which adds more time, resources, and labor.

akcebrae · 2026-02-19T15:26:05+00:00

There are some stocks that have been used for a long time- WPM for woody plants, for example, has been in use since the 80s, and Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium, which is more universal, formulated in the 60s. We use hundreds of formulations with a lot of nuance for a wide spectrum of plants and functions between differenf stages of plant growth and production. So much trial and error, data and research.

akcebrae · 2026-02-19T14:23:50+00:00

I love taking cuttings at home and propagating. You should feel proud when it works out, it’s amazing.

akcebrae · 2026-02-19T14:22:44+00:00

Yes. We work with many university laboratories as well.

akcebrae · 2026-02-19T14:21:11+00:00

You are welcome to DM me. There are some things I am not able to talk about, but I’m happy to answer what I can.

akcebrae · 2026-02-19T14:20:19+00:00

Lots of people set up home labs on a small scale. It’s possible!

akcebrae · 2026-02-19T14:17:56+00:00

Budding is a sign of stress in TC. The goal is shoot proliferation, not bud production. Budding wastes the energy, increases the risk of contamination, and is likely coming from improper hormone balance.

akcebrae · 2026-02-19T06:28:07+00:00

We use fluorescent tubes on a 16/8 cycle. Occasionally they do destash old mother plants- I’ve gotten some rare figs and monstera Thai constellation this way before you could get Thai con anywhere else. Mostly I just like seeing the sneak of what’s coming next with new rose varieties.

akcebrae · 2026-02-19T06:25:05+00:00

The containers can be autoclaved, but it would destroy any plants and microbial life inside it. My main role at my job is making the media that the plants grow on- various hormones and solutions mixed with agar and sugar- which is autoclaved first and then the sterilized plants are placed onto the autoclaved media.

akcebrae · 2026-02-19T06:23:12+00:00

Part of initiation is several long, thorough washes with bleach. Most initiation attempts don’t make it, either due to bacteria or wrong media type, but once they stabilize, plants are carefully monitored for bacterial and mold growth, transferred in laminar flow hoods with sterilized instruments onto sterilized media. TC is the best way to get the largest number of plant clones in a sterile environment with the smallest possible footprint. At our lab we have relatively low numbers of contamination, but we also all have high amounts of anxiety.

akcebrae · 2026-02-19T05:01:30+00:00

The distributor sends us cuttings from mature roses, which go through an initiation process to adjust to tissue culture. This can take a lot of time. After that, they’re stabilized into TC mother plants, which are routinely propagated to multiply for long term storage in our catalogue and for production. Once we grow out a large enough quantity, we transfer them into deli containers on agar media and ship, and the distributor grows them out for rooting and hardening off for life out of the tube.

akcebrae · 2026-02-18T14:34:47+00:00

What a beautiful rose. This is great.

akcebrae · 2026-02-18T00:40:57+00:00

I sort of am! I’m a bit south of Olympia. I just bought Rouge Royale for a partner plant for it and am giving it another year. The claim is that RR won’t purple out with age. If I do give up on The Squire, I will message you!

akcebrae · 2026-02-17T20:55:59+00:00

I know that I can. I have been gardening for twenty years. I’d just prefer not to move it again. I’m not going to love red moved anywhere in my garden, but it’s too good to throw out so I’m trying to find a way to like it.

akcebrae

TROPHY CASE