rooting rose cuttings

What's y'all's opinion on what strength rooting hormone to use for roses? Hormex offers #1, #3, #8 and #16. Wouldn't it make sense to use the strongest? I root many varieties. Now I use #3 and get pretty good results with 50% of varieties but some are stubborn. What does it hurt to go full strength? Thanks

No experience with rooting hormone treatments, but I've had good success with "hard" cuttings by slitting the stem for a centimetre or so and inserting a grain of rice - doesn't matter what sort, but I use long grain 'cos it's easier to handle.  Then into the growing medium.
Do your cuttings produce true to type? Most roses seem to be grafted these days.

Jill Dyer wrote:
Do your cuttings produce true to type? Most roses seem to be grafted these days.

Provided that the cuttings are taken from above the graft union, the resultant plant will be an exact clone.

A friend of mine plonked a bunch of potted up rose cuttings in my hoop house last winter, 60% made it till now. She put varieties in pots, like 4 of these in this one pot and then 4 in the other. She instructed me to use rooting hormone, which i usually don't because i don't like adding stuff to soil and prefer to grow varieties that are easily propagated naturally, so that in my system i can easily scale up while not relying on externals. But i had instructions so i did put the rooting hormone in and mostly it depended on varieties, if they survived. She says it doesn't work without rooting hormone, and she's stubborn as a mule, so telling her about the grain of rice won't change a thing. Although i like little tips like that.
On topic, i think rooting hormone can be handy, but there are alternatives and using a stronger one is worse and doesn't always lead to the same results as much in my limited experience depends on variety used..

Hugo Morvan wrote:
On topic, i think rooting hormone can be handy, but there are alternatives and using a stronger one is worse and doesn't always lead to the same results as much in my limited experience depends on variety used..

I have used rooting hormone powders in the past but seldom do any more as I've found that by simply taking multiple cuttings, plonking them all in a pot and keeping them watered but not over watered yields at least 60% strike rate.

There is a beautiful yellow floribunda highly fragrant rose named Friesia bred in the mid 70's that was given to me as a cutting that I have shared with many friends.

It is easily grown from cuttings and flowers within the second year as a tiny plant.