Jeff,
I have found that early bloomers are sometimes also fast and generous repeaters. However, I have also found that sometimes these early starters can bloom at the expense of building infrastructure. Meaning that some of them never make much of a plant, and may in fact bloom themselves to death.
I have also found that in certain breeding lines, some seedlings that don’t flower at all the first year can become some of the most generous repeat bloomers once mature. There is no way to know for certain. Its best to let any potential winner grow to at least 3 years of age before passing any harsh judgments. That is not to say that you can’t spot the losers right out of the gate sometimes (a crappy flower will always be a crappy flower) and we cull these as quickly as possible. Drop by some afternoon in June and I’ll show you how I do it here when I cull seedlings. You may be surprised what is kept and what is tossed out, and why.
Well, I’ve noticed that seeds that germinate early tend to be repeat bloomers. For example, one of my Cologne X Constance Spry seedlings germinated quickly and made a flower within months.
But the others that germinated late are once bloomers. (I’ve only kept one once bloomer… the repeat bloomer died years ago, the other is in somebody’s garden.)
Lets see if Paul’s Scarlet Nightmoss will show a bloom within this season. I know there would if I had a larger sample to preserve. I usually let several die because… I have no space.
Interesting. Just for the heck of it I’m going to keep a record of individual rose germination dates, bloom date and repeat bloomers. My database seems to be growing daily. I hope I’m not going to get carried away with record keeping. That may not be practical with several thousand seedlings, but right now it might be a good learning experience.
“but right now it might be a good learning experience.”
I think that anything and everything we can use as a learning experience is great, and sometimes also valuable sharing material. There is so much to be learned, and just when one thinks that something is learned, an exception to the rule seems to pop up. Roses seem to be very funny that way.
I have rose seedlings popping up daily right now, and am observing them very closely-don’t want the dreaded downy mildew to get a foothold, and have been observing my older plants as well, and have seen a few scant traces of it, but have been nuking the tops with rounds of various cures, while applying stuff to build immunity to the whole plant. So, while I don’t have to much to show for the first 3 yrs. I sure have picked up a lot of learning experience.
Jackie
Jeff, your observations will no doubt add to all of our learning. That’s one of the things about the RHA forum that is so great - we can all share in the accumulation of knowledge gained by each person.
Jim Sproul