I am curious how every one takes care of their new sprouts when they start emerging while still going through the stratification process. Do you pot the ones that sprouted individually and leave the unsprouted seeds in the refrigerator? Do you pot the sprouted and leave the rest out for warm stratification? Do you take all the seeds (sprouted or not) and put in a large pot to grow as a community?
This is only my 4th year of germinating rose seeds so I know there is plenty of room for my methods to improve. Last year was my first year of using moistened vermiculite. It was also the first year I experienced sprouting while still in the refrigerator. So what I did was pick them out individually and pot them in 6oz yogurt cups and I left the unsprouted seeds in their bags. I continued to put the bags back in the refrigerator until about March. For the next weeks I did 1 day of warm stratification followed by 1 day of cold. After that week I took all the seeds out of the refrigerator permanently and allowed them to sprout inside their baggies throughout the rest of the season. Throughout this whole process I would just pick out the individual sprouted seedling and pot it up individual. It was not until Fall that I took them out of the bags and put them in trays (I got a few more sprouted at that time so they were kept indoors throughout this winter).
I would say that I recognize my current practice is a little bit more time consuming than putting them all in flats, but I do like the fuss I am able to give to each and every sprout. I like the excitement I feel when a cross or collection I made sprouts when I didn’t think it would result in a germination.
Any comments on your methods (or my own) would be welcome. Thanks
Andre, I pretty much use the same system as you with the exception of removing the seed packet from the fridge when seeds start sprouting and placing the packet in a 45-55F degree location, which is my patio on the north side. I did use the community pot for a couple of crosses last yr. in which I just planted all the seeds of a given mix when the first few started sprouting and it is a lot less labor and time intensive, and the plants do a bit of competitive self-culling themselves. My community pot was not real large and the roots did not develop well on most (not all) of them. I also have discovered the deeper 2" tubes which are a whole new ballgame in root development and may consider slowly changing to that system totally. It would be interesting to hear from anyone who has done any comparison with longer term root development with community pots, coffee cup/yoghurt cups, versus tubes and forest pots. So far the tubes seem to be doing better for the short run, which is up to a year.
All I can say is, I am so grateful it isn’t necessary to do any of that here. I plant them around the end of November, keep them watered and leave them alone. They come up, do their thing and all I have to do is water them and enjoy.
After the seeds have been in the fridge for about 6 weeks I start checking them for signs of germinating and then I check them once a week. I remove the ones that are starting to open but I don’t usually plant them right away, I keep them at basement temp until the root tip is at least ¼” long, but not too long since they’re harder to plant. I don’t know if I need to do that but it when I first started doing this it seemed that the seeds that were planted before they had a good root didn’t germinate well and I lost many seedlings. I don’t plant my seeds into a flat like most people do but I plant them into 3 x 3 inserts with three seeds per insert. I can get 54 seeds per tray and it’s less transplanting that way. I probably lose 1/3 of the seeds from not germinating, being sickly, deformed or from dying off so there is some transplanting and consolidation of plants in the inserts. I usually do this until March also because anything germinated after that would be too small to plant outside in May. And since the growing season is pretty short here I don’t know if the late germinations would be large enough by fall to survive the winter.
This is a lot more work than just putting them in flats and forgetting about them. But when there is 2 feet of snow on the ground and it’s -20f outside it gives me something to do and it’s great to see signs of life when everything else is dormant.
I’ve been following pretty much the same routine for a long time. I use 6-paks (12/tray) with 2 seed/place, so total 144/tray. 2trays/4 ft shoplight. As Paul notes, some seeds open but don’t grow. My impression, it is about the seedling, not the planting. I check once a month in a fridge (or sometimes 2x/mo if I have time). Plant everything that’s sprouted with root over a couple mm long. Some 6-paks end up with 12 blooming seedlings, some with only 4-5, average probably 6-7. So my % germination rates are higher than what I get to flowering or transplanting for most CV. Right now I have planted over 1300 seeds in about 10 trays, starting late Jan. Some of the best have decent buds and will bloom in under 3 weeks from now. A lot of these are crosses to Carefree Beauty. Others to Silver Moon. About half sprouted already in the C.B. crosses, with stratification from Mid-Nov, harvest in mid-Sep with cold holding hips those 2 mo in between. Most were taken from hips in a 50 yr old genuine Waring Blendor. 10-20 hips in a cup of water, 30 sec on hi. Turns the hip to relish. Drain through sieve and pick out seeds.
This year, using the Pro-Mix, I learned that watering once a week with 1/2 strength Hoagland’s solution really helps. Last year I had a plague of mildew nearly wipe things out. Previous year I didn’t realize the Pro-Mix is lacking nutrients different from the seedling mix I had previously. Slowly learning. Hope for half a dozen good ones. Still maybe 6000 seeds to go.
