How do you label your pollinated mother rose flowers?
I am a beginner, and last year I only used 2 mothers, and made 3 flowers/hips, using some mixed pollen from about 4 other roses. I used coloured embroidery thread to mark the pollinated flowers, and wrote exactly what I had done in a notebook.
This year I want to try to do a lot more. I will probably still use some mixed pollen, but I want to try some specific crosses too, with single rose pollen. I bought some more roses last winter, which are now looking as though they will flower, one (Dusky Maiden) even has a flower bud. My existing Jacqueline du Pre is covered in buds and last year she began flowering in early May.
I have seen those white plastic labels that you wrap around tree branches, which seem to be what people use. I don’t know what they are called. I noticed that the supposedly permanent ink black marker pens to go with them have mixed reviews, and in my experience those are not fine tipped enough and make very thick marks, and tend to rub off plastic too, and I have always used pencil.
The coloured embroidery threads mark the pollinated flowers so that I don’t accidentally dead head them, and the mother rose is obvious, and maybe if I make clear notes in my notebook I can get away with using them again, I have a big collection of colours.
Personally, I use a piece of 3M blue masking tape folded around on itself below the peduncle, identifying the father with a laundry Sharpie. I’ve never lost one, and they are usually easy to see even in thick foliage, or on the ground if the hip aborts.
Found a label in the garden after some wind… It was locked on the smallest setting but had clearly wriggled over the hip nonetheless. I also suspect the hard edges could damage stems (in windy areas) so I am switching to sticky labels, as above.
Back in the mid-2000s I used to make thousands of pollinations every year, so I needed a huge volume of labels to identify pollinated blooms. I bought “string tags” by the thousands - the tiny tags used by antique shops to label items.
I wrote on them with pencil, so they lasted the season. The only downside I found was when the tag was close enough to the ground to attract slugs, which would sometimes eat the writing off the tag. Otherwise, they were nearly perfect.
I use office sticky labels like these and loop them around the stem of the hip. I also use an archival ink pen so it doesn’t fade or bleed the ink when it gets wet, etc.
I use 4 inch strips of telephone wire. The cable piece I have has 64 colors. I have a master sheet where I keep track of which color goes with which pollen. I just take the wire and wrap it around the stem just below where I am pollinating. Since I know the seed parent and I make all my crosses in June I don’t need to keep track of anything else.
For the four months it takes for a hip to mature, there are numerous options than can last long enough. Jewelers tags are often a very affordable option. I like them as they are often (depending on style or brand) discrete, but perhaps a little too much so. (I might try more obnoxiously colored ones as I age. Inevitably I forget how much new foliage a rose pushes in a few short months – enough to completely hide a hip!)
Graphite is surprisingly fade resistant as compared to grease pencil or permanent marker (at least the brands I tried) but might not adhere to everything, and as stated above, paper based labels can be eaten or deteriorate (which stinks for me since I try to avoid non-biodegradables.)
Do you use organza bags or anything to prevent pollination by other sources, after you’ve pollinated? Or is it unlikely to happen once you’ve stripped the flower petals away? I’ve gotten quite a few open-pollinated crossed but was hoping to try some purposeful crosses this year.
I love the organza bags, due to my lazy pollinating technique… ie after removing petals from both parents and stamens from mother, I place the entire father bud on the mother bud secured inside the organza bag and let the sun & wind do its thing.
Disclaimer: My first time pollinating, hips developing now (in the southern hemisphere) but method is unproven, as such
Also used the bags to cover some mother buds before pollinating as I found one plant opening blooms sooner than expected in the dry heat at the time.
Only need small bags - I even turn the bottom edge for a cosier fit.
I use the string labels that Paul Barden mentioned, really cheap on Amazon.
If I am doing a lot of crosses on a lot of plants, I will put one label on a branch and use the same cross on every bloom on that branch: saves a lot of time when dealing with higher volume.
You can add the date of the cross on the tag also. I put the date in the book, but then can’t always correspond with the tag on the plant, when many tags have been put on the plant. However, it is usually in a two or three week window so doesn’t matter much here. But if you have a long breeding season it could be helpful.
Duane
