Why you shouldn’t believe claims you can grow a rose in a potato

Sometimes it is the really counterintuitive ideas in horticulture that ironically turn out to be the most effective. So about a decade ago, when the internet was suddenly flush with a curious new technique for using potatoes to propagate rose bushes, I was keen to test it out.

Here is the basic idea: instead of inserting the snipped ends of rose cuttings into bare soil as is standard practice, you poke them into whole, raw spuds, which are then buried in pots of compost. Supposedly, this gives home gardeners better results.

Raking up millions of views, posts espousing this…