Yes, Will, the plant is about 2" tall and the flower about the size of a dime! The seed was sown in March. I put them outside in the greenhouse in April and they went into cups in mid June. So far I've had 12 of the 62 plants bloom. Only one of them didn't make it so far. It was too small and just shriveled up and died.

So cool Seil! I hope you keep updating us. I'm very intrigued by the process. Wish I'd been taught hybridization and grafting in school beyond a passing mention. I have a botany degree but very little I learned has a practical application (aside from much stress on the dangers of monoculture).

Seil. When this happens (when you make this happen), do all the seedlings look alike?
What's the next step? This is really cool. David

Hiamakki, anyone can do it! It's fun, easy and inexpensive. As you see I do it in my backyard with ordinary household items. All you need are some seeds, potting soil and cups! I have a paper I did for my rose society if you'd like I can email it to you if you PM me your address.

David, every single seed becomes its own new variety! There are only a handful of species roses that will grow true to variety from seed and then only if they are self pollinated. So if I have one hip from say, Peace, and that hip has 6 seeds in it and they all germinate, I will have 6 brand new varieties with Peace as the mother (seed) parent. Even if the hip was a self pollination each seed will contain a different mix of the genetic make up of the parent rose, Peace. Each one will have different traits from all of the genetic background that produced the Peace rose. So they can be any color or form, have stripes, lots of thorns or none or anything else. It all depends on which genes each seed had passed to it. If it is a cross between two roses (seed from one, the Mother, and pollen, the Father, from another) it can have any genetic combination from either parent and all of their genetic backgrounds. ENDLESS combinations!

Here are two seeds from a Blue for You hip




And two from a rose called Lynnie by Kim Rupert




I will tell you though that a lot of them have a kind of default setting (as Kim calls it) and turn out to be a rather humdrum 5 petaled medium pink bloom. A lot of breeders plant thousands of seeds and in the end only end up with one or two good ones that get introduced. It's a very long process. Particularly if you are breeding toward a goal, like a better color or form or disease resistance!

Seil.
Does that mean that you will keep the 62 plants that bloomed this year? No, that
can't be. From what you've told us, each one will be different. What do you with
all those babies and how do you know which ones to...er...eliminate?
David

Wouldn't it be fun to have a rose garden composed entirely of hybridizers' rejects?

Not if most of them produced what Seil describes as "rather humdrum 5 petaled medium pink" blooms.

No, I couldn't possibly keep them all. I've been doing this for about 10 years now and some years I've had as many as 300 seedlings. What I have left from all those previous years is 9 plants. Only two of those are planted in the garden. I think maybe another 4 will get planted because I've liked what they've been doing for several years now and the other 3 will probably end up being tossed out for various reasons. I cull the duds out. Ones that don't bloom well, grow oddly or ones that are very diseased or ones that I just don't care for the blooms at all will go. And my winters will cull many of them for me. They do not get any special winter protection. They go into the winter pot ghetto with all my potted roses. If they survive that's a point in their favor.

You're right, Zuzu. I rarely keep the default roses unless they have some other distinctive characteristic.

I would give extra points for any rose that survived the winter north of Lake Erie.
I think, aside from the winter hardiness, the decisions would be tough. It sounds
like a lot of work and a lot of fun, Seil. Thanks for explaining it. David

Porkpal, it would be like the island of misfit toys!

A lot of breeders have other breeders misfits. They share seedlings to pass around the genes all the time. I got L56-1 hips from Kim who got the seedling from Jim. They're good roses for one aspect or another but not just right. So it gets bred with other things to try and make that elusive perfect rose we all want, lol!

At what age(s) do you cull? Or, I suppose, it can be a fairly continuous process.

LolaTasmania said:Seil - eight weeks back from the first bloom for me would be the last week of August. As the first of September is the first day of spring here I suppose I should make that my official pruning day. That means I have pruned way too early this time but it will be easy to remember for next year.

Lola
My experience in our part of the southern hemisphere, pruning is best done not before September, here during most of October. Why? because I want to delay as much as possible early spring leafing out. Our winters are mild, colder that yours but not that much. I hardly ever find winter damage or die back. However ,during winter, the bushes are in dormant mode, even if they are not deciduous. They stop growing altogether. When days starting getting longer, (now) as soon as one prunes the end of a cane, one stimulates new growth. I need to delay that 'till the last moment. If I don't touch winter dormant canes they stay 'sleepy' until at least September if temps keep cool or cold. Here, my main problem are spring freezes that kill new growth. If they kill the new growth of the upper buds ( which would have been pruned anyway) then the lower buds are still dormant and will provide for the permanent growth unaffected. Thus I buy a time window of about six weeks. But of course that is fine tuning with your local climate. I had to learn this here otherwise if I pruned with the standard criterion I would never get blooms!
I'll check later to see if my PA has still leaves on it. My bushes are all very quiet. We have a steady winter snow-rain weather, which started about begining of June and is forecasted so until end of August.

Arturo

Arturo, every growth node has three starts in it. Even if a node begins to grow and then is frozen and dies there are still two other starts there to take its place. You would still get new growth and bloom after a freeze loss. Every spring I go through several freeze and thaws and my roses still grow and bloom.

We actually don't NEED to prune the rose. We do it for ourselves not the rose. It keeps the rose in the size and shape we like but the rose will grow and bloom just fine without it. There are thousands of roses around the world that no one tends or ever prunes that have been growing and blooming for many decades all by themselves. Timing the pruning is for our benefit and not the roses. Exhibitors will tell you all about watching and charting how long a rose takes to cycle so they can prune a rose to have blooms at just the right time for a show. I know from experience that even if I prune in February, with my weather, I still won't get my first bloom until around June 1st. Regardless of when I prune or the roses cycle or how many freeze and thaws it goes through my roses bloom in June.

Now that is right when I was living in my house in Meyerland before the floods my 50 varieties of roses that I was growing all got very big and before
at our house we had in Alief, TX (far West Houston, TX area) I had an china rose called 'Mutabilis' which had canes that were almost 2 inches in
diameter. It was truly huge. I let all my 50 varieties get very large so that most years I was able to cut 20 to 30 blooms each day even through the
summer. We pretty much always had blooming roses.

Amanda----Do yourself a favor. Look up Wisconsin Roses. He sells great budded maidens on good multiflora root stock that survives Wisconsin winters. He has a video explaining everything. They are great roses and they don't hit your wallet $$$$. If you call and talk to him, he might have a few roses floating around that aren't on his list.

I'll look him up, thanks!!

Seil, thanks for your clarification. I mostly agree with what you say. Unfortunately every spring I go through many spring freeze thaws. Our springs are cold and damaging frost occurrs regularly almost every two weeks, during September all the way until almost Christmas. So I may have up to 8 frosts per season. However as days warm up the later frosts are less damaging and the bush finally is able to overcome its fruitless efforts.I will pay close attention to see how many starts leaf out initially and will try leaving some to find if the hidden dormants replace the frozen this coming season. I will also look carefully why some of my HT's are so stingy with their blooms. Perhaps I adscribed it wrongly of not pruning adequately and its caused by something else. Somehow I sense that after all, with those deadend tips I prefer just pruning off the weakened bits and let the bush start new growth from a lower node. I realized that I posted thinking mainly around my HT's and FLbs. Some rosarians would also argue that pruning keeps the overall bush in a juvenile state and thus the quantity of blooms is greater. I've yet to figure out which of my modern roses would fit into that description. The Austins actually I only trim them a bit. Because of their varied origin I'm coming to grips for each bush variety. Some do benefit from a pruning if measured by the quantity of blooms (instead of if it blooms or not). Rugosas and most of my OGR's I almost only give them a cleaning prune: Dead twigs, crossed over canes, rubbing etc. Species roses hybrids the same. Climbers are only watched from a distance, except when being espaliered. I've got quite a few of them since I'm very partial towards vertical accent in the garden... Every year my roses start their bloom at a different date. I have had early roses in November, but mostly after the second week of December. The real flush is for sure X-mas and New Year. Yes, even if I don't prune them at all , they will still all bloom sooner or later.
However, I still prefer delaying pruning towards the start of spring though. The main difference I have seen with you guys up there is that in the northern hemisphere, once the season starts every thing grows and grows and doesn't stop. With our mainly cool year-round weather, roses do grow but at a much slower rate, so the natural compensatory ability of a bush is substantially diminished here. In spite of making sure that my bushes have adequate food and water still the growth rates I achieve are considerably less than yours. I suppose that it is because the overall temperature pattern. @RoseBlush1 Lyn pointed out to me recently I might have an iron defficiency in my very sandy soils that could alternatively explain my slow growth. I will be testing that this spring. I'll report if that's the case and perhaps she discovered something that appears in certain type of soils. So we'll see
What I agree mainly with your clarification is that roses do NOT NEED pruning. Yes I fully agree with that. The other reason roses are pruned specially during the initial formative years ( almost all of mine), are for achieving the landscape shape that is in our imagination . Much later on it is also used for rejuvenating very old specimens, which I have done in one case successfully.
Arturo

Hello Arturo,

I would recommend OGR's as I have been a strong advocate for these old roses since I started
growing roses. I have only grown about 3 or 4 Hybrid Teas or Grandifloras in my Garden, I have
pretty much stuck to China roses, Bourbon and Tea Roses. Of course this is in Houston, TX where we have blooming roses from about March through and past Christmas. In your case I would be looking at
a lot of the OGR's that just bloom once or occasionally like the Centifolias and the Damask Roses
That is what I will do if my better half when she retires decides to move us to Bend, OR which is
much colder that Houston, TX It would probably be more like what you experience in Argentina

@Willinator, Would you then also add to look carefully into my OGR's as well?. I have a few that might benefit from something beyond a mere trim. One of them is a moss 'Gloire de Mousseux'. I have a suspicion that it may need more than just tidying up. Bourbons and Chinas are under represented in my yard yet. I'm still awaiting this year's surprise order from my specialty nursery. If lucky, I might add some new cultivars of those.I've got a few damasks. These seem to be growing and blooming generously almost untouched.
Well, once pruned there's no way back.With my Peace, I followed the suggested general practise and pruned it a third. It has still not forgiven me for that. Later ( as one does...too late) I read in HMF that it dislikes being pruned period! :sigh:Fortunately its sport (here Kronenbourg =aka Flaming Peace) shares that same trait. So my K is twice as big as my Peace, 'cuz I read the HMF advice before my pruning shears reached it....
My teas seem to be happy with no pruning. The only one requiring one is a monster climber now: 'Clg.Marie van Houtte'. In this case I won't worry a bit if I overprune it. It has grown canes as thick as my wrist and plenty of them, reaching already the eves of the first floor balcony! Neighbouring I've got another climber even larger:' Fortune's Double Yellow'. After 4 years,own root, not more than one bloom for the full plant. I'm going to prune the tips this year to make sure it decides to bloom on the side shoots. If it does it will be spectacular, if still not then I duno:confused:
<< It would probably be more like what you experience in Argentina>>
This country is so big that I wouldn't want anyone to get the impression that my specific location in the NW Patagonian mountains is anywhere nearly representative of the country. In fact most of it is much warmer and even warmer than Houston. However your comparison of my location with Oregon is quite spot on when compared anywhere in the USA. Not so much coastal but nearer eastern Oregon.
Thanks for your suggestion.Much appreciated!
Arturo

PS I just checked Bend,Or and really has a very similar climate. It is slightly higher than my place ( i'm about 850 mt asl and Bend is at 1100 mt). When you move there, you'll definitely feel a major difference! wow