It all started like so many things do, with a YouTube rabbit hole after midnight. One minute I’m watching a piece on cutting back overgrown basil, the next I’m told that with a banana created for me, I’m ready to grow a whole new rose bush. Not to plant a banana. Just wrap it around a rose stem and let it develop.
So obviously, I had to try it. And oddly enough, it does work. Well, that is if you do this correctly and don’t hit the panicky stage midway like I did.
This comes from Vườn & Nhà. I haven’t got the flauntest idea why I went there, but the video showed it to be absolutely doable. So here’s what happened when I attempted to follow the routine.
First of all I had to collect various tools I didn’t possess
Now the list will sound simple until you get to such things as perlite and ties and the “parent plant must be a healthy, disease-free plant” which is rather a tough thing to arrive at in my yard.
Howsomever, here’s what I did secure:
One fairly good rose plant (the only one that hadn’t given up the ghost)
Nickers
A tool I shouldn’t have used indoors
Ties (O thank you junk drawer)
Some twigs from the yard
A glass I cut open with a light pang of regret
Wet soil (truthfully swill)
Perlite (which I had to get on the Google)
And, of course, a banana. Just one. Medium.
So This Part Is Where You Cut a Rose and Wish for the Best
You are supposed to take a stout, good stem from the rose bush and put a cut in it, a little cut, a cut in an upright position, probably half way through, not through the whole thing.
This is where the perlite goes in, for by the way perlite is simply magic dust for root-making. It is as though you were giving a plant a horse start.
So I did this. Sort of. I was a little vigorous about my cut, but what of it?
Now to fasten a twig to the stem I had a padlock which I put on horizontally under the cut for the twig. I think it was for support, but I don’t really know, I did that anyway. It looked like a combination of a doctor and a nut.
The Banana Part
Now here comes the queerest part.
You take a banana, whack off the ends and cut it down the middle. After doing this, you take the mushy part of it – merely the fruit, not the skin – and you put that around the stem, covering the part that has the perlite in it.
The banana part is held in by padlocks too, something I never thought I would write. It is horrible, I will say Horrible. The texture is something unpleasant; but the idea is that this will feed the cutting and keep it moist.
Then you make this funny little capsule
I cut a slit in the side of a plastic cup, made a hole in the bottom, and wrapped it around the stem like a net, thus thoroughly covering the banana mess. More cable ties to hold it in place.
I filled the cup with moist earth, shoved a stick or two in it to keep it from toppling over, and then simply looked at it. It looked like a failed teenage science project or a trapped nightmarish alien space capsule. But it was hopeful too.
Then you wait. A lot.
After about 25 days, I left it alone. The worst part? Not to keep poking it every other day in order to “check up on the roots”, which is a splendid way to get it all in a mess.
At last I untied the cable ties, peeled away the cup (gently, as it had attached itself somewhat to the earth) and there were the roots. Actual roots. Coming from a banana-wrapped rose cutting, disguised in a hacked up Solo-cup.
I cut the very bottom off, set it in a proper pot with proper potting soil, watered it, and placed it in the sunniest part of the porch, like it was a jewel.
And it’s still alive. Which I call a win.
But why go through all of this?
I mean, you could buy yourself a rose plant, of course. But cloning one gives you the exact kind of rose that you love and produces the very same flowers and has the very same perfume, and that’s neat if you have one you are crazy about, or you’ve paid so much for the first incantation, you don’t want to do it again.
Plus, it won’t cost you anything. If you have these objects already on hand (or can use substitutes), you afford it, which is a neat and wise feeling. Something like a little trick on the system.
Would I do it again? I probably would, since it is weird and messy and quite well worth the climb into that first basement of roots, and moreover, I’ll never look on a banana the same way. Half the time I expect it to birth red roses for me in time, just on general principles.
So, sure. If you have a bush of roses you love and a banana, try it. If you spoil it, you’ve wasted a banana. If you are fortunate, you have a complete new plant—and a neat story.
