As the title suggests, I just wanted to know how many seedlings people on here raise each year?
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I seem to increase every year. 2023-4 = 139 crosses, resulting in 37 harvested hips, 27 of which resulted in 130 germinations, and a little more than half of those were culled before transplanting outdoors. So I now have 58 in the outdoor test bed. I may keep only 5 to 10 of those by the end of summer.
But I have collected enough information thus far to direct my 2024 crosses (which began about a week ago).
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How do you decide on which to cull. Surely they are not that unhealthy by that point?
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My culling primarily resulted from not having enough room in the garden. Roughly though, perhaps 10% were runts, chlorotic, or just generally weak. They generally culled themselves. Probably more than that were single (which can be nice, but not my goal), and I had a few crosses where nearly every seed germinated, were pretty much all the same, and I just didnāt need that many examples. And unless it was a particularly interesting cross, I got rid of many that didnāt show signs of juvenile bloom (especially those which suggested they would be climbers).
Iām not nearly as ruthless as Martin Nemko stated in his last post, but I think Iāll eventually get there.
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I am yet to cull any of my roses that havenāt decided to give up themselvesā¦ I have an allotment, so they will go into there after a period of trying to fill up pots. I am keeping my runts for now as I have the space and I want to see if they can be something lovely
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I think youāll likely find that runts rarely develop into anything worth using further and in many cases, even keeping in the garden. The best goal is to create a good plant first. Ralph Moore admonished that, stating, āitās always easy to hang a pretty flower on it later.ā I look for weak growth. GONE. Sparse, unattractive or unhealthy foliage. GONE. Too much plant for the amount of bloom. GONE. Too similar to many others out there. GONE. You will eventually run out of room, plus probably your energy and water will also dwindle to the point of culling simply because you canāt justify maintaining things that likely simply arenāt worth maintaining.
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Thank you, as itās very early days for me I might as well hold onto them to prove to myself they are worthless. I have space for now! Probably wonāt next year!
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I got maybe 550 seedlings and lot still need to bloom. Weather in The Netherlands is not working last few weeks but finally sunny warm days this week.
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Breeding year 2023:
I received of 412 hips approx. 3902 achenes, consisting of selective pollinations as well as open pollinations. Out of this number, I achieved 654 seedlings, including, larger batches, which were all similar looking. This fact has given me the need of considerably reducing the number of seedlings.
Indoors, Iām following the selection procedure for habit, leaf and root development. I donāt like cultivating roses with poor growth and stature. As soon as the seedlings go outdoors, I select fairly ruthlessly for the occurrence of diseases. Here too, my experience has shown that further cultivation is not worthwhile in this case.
As Iām mainly hybridizing with species roses, only few modern roses and historical roses, I mostly canāt expect juvenile flowers. The beauty, colour and fragrance of the flowers are therefore not a selection factor for me at this stage.
Unfortunately, it is often the case that seedlings that look really interesting in leaf and stem colour are not vigorous. I have every year seen this happen and sadly this given fact never changed in the further course of development despite many extraordinary efforts.
Long story short: There are currently 14 seedlings still available. I expect that there will be a few more losses before the end of this season, which means that in my final balance only 5-6 will stay for further selection next season.
I find it interesting and exciting to observe the seedling developments on a daily basis. Especially how you can observe, that some seedlings, especially of wild- and historical roses, still change many years later. In contrast, it is often the case that roses with a very strong chinensis influence develop more quickly.
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Woweee, I have to push my rookie numbers up
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Some statistics from one of my previous breeding years:
Total number of seeds (achenes): 1200 ā 453 germinations ā 171 of which produced the first bloom (repeat flowering roses). Of these 171 first-bloomers, 48 were preselected for further tests. Tests resulted in about 20 selected seedlings, which must still be narrowed down to just very few.
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I pulled em all outta the fridge and sowed my back out this week! The weather was against me this season, with heat domes on repeat, but I did get a nice fat hip on āQuadraā from a late pollination with āKarl Herbstā. Fragrant red shrubs are always a good idea, I think. I got OP hips off all my best mother-plants to test germination, and what I learn will affect which crosses get made this year?
But I already know āRugeldaā and āAbraham Darbyā are getting together. Probably both ways, several times. Lol
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