Four to Five years ago I recieved a plant of EGS1 (Easy Going X Suzanne) via Margit Schowalter/Peter Harris. This plant was bred by Julie Overom and she wanted some hybridizers to use it in developing a cold hardy yellow.
It was planted on the east side of my house…a protected area, and with each passing year it demonstrated it had a vigor that surprised me. This year it changed it’s thicket form by sending out some very tall canes (2m…6ft)…and it bloomed on that new wood! I find this a “no fuss” rose and am quite pleased with it. What have other hybridizers/growers experiences been and could you post some photos of seedlings if you have any?
It is indeed a gorgeous rose. I ended up digging mine out as best as I could because it was suckering aggressively. I’m also not a fan of Suzanne heritage, because it seems to pass on poor disease resistance and lots of thorns. (Not to imply anything about the disease resistance of EGS1…I can’t remember much about that.)
Several years ago I used a lot of EGS1 pollen blended with that of Above & Beyond. I don’t know what I was thinking because it made it impossible to tell which of the two was the parent. I did not get any keepers out of the resultant seedlings. It is so difficult to regain rebloom after making a cross of a hardy (especially when tetraploid) once-bloomer such as Suzanne with a tender rebloomer such as Easy Goin’ that the F1 needs to be truly superior in order for it to make the following efforts worthwhile.
I’ve chosen to go down the path of using R. carolina, R. virginiana, Above & Beyond, and recently R. nitida as my hardy parents for hardy/tender crosses instead of the Canadian hardies like Suzanne, Prairie Peace, and Ross Rambler, because I think the the former roses offer superior disease resistance and fewer thorns.
Ultimately it’s just a personal preference, and I hope you will get something amazing out of EGS1.
EGS1 has a pretty bloom and I like the color. It has average resistance to BS here in NJ. If you look at the descendants you will see that I used it with Denver’s Dream, Whimsy, Petit Pink and Pretty Lady. I was looking to have reduced size F1 with the postive traits of EGS1. I don’t use EGS1 any more due to the size but I think I have 8 F1 left from the crosses mentioned. So far one has bloomed and the group has good to excellent resistance. It would be nice to get a hardy yellow out of the lot. The majority are very thorny with one or two being less so. Petit Pink x EGS1 wants to get big. Hopefully I will get more blooms this season and repeat if I’m lucky.
I switched to “Red Dawn x Suzanne” and hope to get better results. So far I have two F1 from that cross with nothing to report yet.
Interestingly, on HMF, Suzanne itself is listed as having very good disease resistance. I’m surprised to learn its offspring don’t, Joe. But I have hypothesized in the past that as different roses have differing disease avoidance mechanisms, it might be dependent on the class she is crossed with whether a particular mechanism is diluted or reinforced. (REally, I’m blowing smoke as I honestly don’t know.) Can F1’s of EGS1 recover the rebloom of Easy Going?
I had EGS1 or 02-036-1 as Julie called it originally for about 5 years. It had average disease resistance being moderately susceptible to cercospora. It had good winter hardiness surviving mild winters but dyeing back to the snow line in harsher winters.
I tried it as the seed parent once with Goldbusch pollen without getting any hips. I used it’s pollen on Carefree Sunshine, Folksinger, Graham Thomas, Goldbusch, (John Davis OP) and (Morden Centennial OP). I got lots of seeds from the first three but only had a good number of seedlings with Folksinger and those were all culled.
I used two Goldbusch x EGS1 seedlings as pollen parents in crosses. The two GB x EGS1 plants were culled for lack of disease resistance. I have three seedlings from one of those crosses and all three have good disease resistance and good repeat bloom. Two have shown no dieback the past two years.
In 2016 I used one of those seedlings in crosses both as the seed parent and pollen parent. I have 20 seedlings from it as the pollen parent and 8 seedlings from it as the seed parent.
I’m still hoping to acquire EGS1 and use it with some of my own seedlings. Does EGS1 set hips, and if so, does it have
good fertility when employed both ways?
Chuckp
It’s been a few years since I grew EGS1 but I don’t remember it having many hips. The only time I tried pollen on it none of the pollinations took. I used its pollen 6 times and got good seed set about half the time. So my experience is that it’s a better pollen parent than seed parent.
