Here are a couple of numerous seedlings of Carefree Beauty X Old Port. These are 2yr old seedlings, pruned hard last winter, health has been exceptional, blooms are cerise doubles with very good repeat. Foliage of these two seedlings are quite different to each other.
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Great that you were able to get such a healthy looking foliated plant plus lots of flowers. While my CFB is extremely healthy and a blooming machine, I hardly ever got a seedling that did not contend with mildew or a few other issues, among them puny offspring. However I did use pollen from Carefree Copper and CFCopper mix from Larry and have not seen a trace of the issues my crosses produced. This has led me to believe that you have to be either very lucky or wade through more than an average bit of ‘crap’ to find a healthy offspring.
When I did CFB x Old port , I did one cross, with one hip. I ended up with around 10 seedlings, I kept four and the other six were not discarded because of health issues , but more on flower structure. The bloom colour on all seedlings was cerise which seemed pretty consistent, the others had growth similar to the seedling in the last pic.
I think this was a fortunate choice in crosses, as apparently CFB can produce some good outcomes with the right choice. And it can produce dreadful results with many crosses, more so than would be expected with it’s background.
Jackie this was the first time I had worked with CFB, so I had to see what would happen to the offspring. From what I can gather from other peoples work , blooms tend to be a bit blousey and semi double to just being double. One rose cultivar which I find does really well here is Brownell Family (Curly Pink), I feel this with CFB would make a great match in every aspect. Curly Pink is also great for adding huge amounts of petals.
[attachment 1964 01117i69j3.jpg] Here is one of the Carefree Beauty X Old Port offspring flowering last year as 1st year seedling.
I have some CB offspring this season and what I’ve noticed so far is the tendency towards lanky, wispy growth that CB itself has. I guess I’d cross it with dwarf/miniature/compact varieties.
Joe you could match it up with rose cultivars which produce strong growing canes like Eg. Queen Elizabeth, I am not saying use QE but those with similar growth habits. This may get rid of that lankyness you are talking about. I do this alot, if you put whispy growth with whispy growth, thats what you will end up with. I do this alot with David Austin roses which tend to bend too much for my liking, I cross them with rigid upright seedlings of mine and it makes them more robust looking.
Part of my strategy for taming species roses and roses with wild traits like leggyness is to pair them with Paul Barden’s roses as well as with some of Ralph Moore’s minis.
Thanks, Warren and Don.
Don, “Paul Barden’s roses” is a fairly large category. Any in particular? I have Beautiful Anne and Nightmoss.
Taming legginess is one of my main breeding goals. I want shrubs.
One of my earliest crosses was Apothecary’s Rose x mixed Morden Blush & Knock Out pollen. I wasn’t aware of the dominant on/off nature of non-remontancy, so I thought I’d pick the bloomingest roses I knew to ‘counteract’ the once-blooming nature of Apothecary. Well, I ended up with some non-remontant die-back seedlings that have little hope of blooming here save after a super mild winter. But what impressed me about them was that they were so darn shrubby. Tough and uniform, none of this one-cane-shooting-up-to-the-sky stuff. Now how to go about hanging a nice flower on them, achieving remontancy or even true zone 3 hardiness, I don’t know.
[attachment 1965 a2.jpg] Joe this is what I am hinting at, creating a plant which is stout like this and full of vigour. The breeding of this is Sympathie X ( Altissimo X Perfume Delight). It grows to around 5ft, in your cooler climate it would come down to 3ft I would say. I feel crossing this with CFB or its offspriing would make it a little more rigid.
Any in particular?
Hmmm.
I only have a few of his commercialized roses - Incantation, Jeri Jennings, Dragons Blood, Won Fang Yon - and these follow a stylistic pattern that I have termed ‘Noveau Tea’ - and which I am pretty sure can be said of many of his other roses based on their descriptions.
This style is characterized by thin canes having a high degree of branching with internodes spaced far enough apart to open up the plant but not so much as to seem hollow; minimal prickles; an outward and upright growth habit; and sophisticated blooms. The overall effect is an interesting plant having a highly refined and somewhat delicate appearance.
Taming legginess is one of my main breeding goals. I want shrubs.
Put another way you might say that you wish to incorporate certain traits of rustic beauties into more modern hybrids to affect an improvement in both. So, it would help to outline the specific traits you are chasing after at both ends - not here, of course, but as an ongoing part of your breeding process. This makes it easier to be deliberative in your pairing choices.
I am myself in the process of making room to add some others of Paul’s hybrids to my stable. I’m limited by winter storage which, I find, benefits the breeding performance not only Paul’s roses but also those of Ralph Moore’s that I work with. I guess need to breed some Minnesota into them - what do you recommend for that?
Warren, I like the looks of that seedling. I’d like to see it towards the end of the growing season. The roses that you use are usually so foreign to me. Carefree Beauty and your virginiana hybrids I can relate to… Hopefully some day your roses will hit the US market and I can try them here.
Don,
I guess need to breed some Minnesota into them - what do you recommend for that?
I guess that is the question I’m fumbling around to answer. I’m not, at this point, being very deliberative in my pairing choices. I have the luxury of having enough room to try many different directions, including species crosses, and as I see the results I can zero in a little. The first rose that came to mind in response to your question is Prairie Joy. I think she’d pair well with the Barden roses and could possibly impart a little hardiness. Best used as a seed parent, in my untested opinion, to increase the chances of remontant offspring. Radler’s Brite Eyes, which I’ve not used myself, could be another good option.
Joe this is what my cultivars look like at the end of Summer.
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Thanks, Warren. Good job keeping the weeds down.
Thanks Joe , the weeds slow down a bit when the foliage gets this dense and I don’t let the weeds get to big, they take the moisture and nutrient of the soil pretty quickly. Plus a lot of weeds like milk thistles harbour aphids.
Warren and Joe, What terrific growing fields you have. Some of us can only dream.
Joe have you thought of using Coral Dawn it should be easy to find as it is one bred in the USA.
Looks like I’ll have to spend more time on HMF! Both for Coral Dawn and the species in the other post.
Joe,
hanging a nice flower on them, achieving remontancy or even true zone 3 hardiness, I don’t know.
Even if you want to target warmer markets than your own zone 3 you are doing your work in the icebox so your top priority is pretty apparent.
The first rose that came to mind…Best used as…
One of the hardest lessons for me was realizing that the best rose is the one that works.
With that in mind, and because you do have such really great resources in land and infrastructure, you could consider using a brute force approach, at least initially.
Start with as many different zone 3 hardy foundation breeders as you can lay your hands on (it will be a relatively small number) like Svedja’s roses, their derivatives and the other Parkland/Explorer roses; Prairie Peace; some of the Arnold hybrids, maybe; your local wild roses and so on. I would imagine you’ve studied that aspect and that you already have some of these in your collection.
Add a set of breeders that have refinements in extremis: huge and many petals with very high levels of all pigments; high degrees of branching; delicate and smooth limbs; unbridled remontancy and whatever else you desire, the more extravagant the better because Mother Nature tends to average the parents together in the progeny. Augment these with pollen from collaborators, the object being to make as many different survey crosses as possible. As you must already know, most roses of this type will be vulnerable to winter in zone 3.
In the initial seasons matrix the two subsets of breeders against each other to survey for compatibility. In subsequent seasons generate as many F1’s as is physically possible by repeating successful crosses. Protect the F1’s from freezing (hardy + tender = tender) but in the F2 generation of back-crosses let Old Man Winter make the cuts. After a few seasons you will hopefully have the makings of a career.
I realize that this the antithesis of a deliberative approach but your circumstances are unusual. You need to make relatively wide crosses because remixing the already highly introgressed gene pool of modern roses won’t cut it in Minnesota. There are very significant genetic barriers to making wide crosses so the rate of success will be low. Brute force could get you off to a running start, and you have the resources to do it.
Of course, you could just forget roses and go into rhododendrons. There is great opportunity for breeding yellow rhodys and there are cultivars that are bud hardy to -45 degrees 