My way of dealing with seeds from harvest to planting produces poor results–average 10 to 15% germination. So I welcome suggestions. Here’s what I do.
First, in case it’s relevant, I live in the warmest part of Oakland, CA: Day time temps are 70s to 90s, nighttime temps 50s-60s, essentially no rain. Lots of sun. That’s the weather all the way through mid-November, when it gets 10 degrees cooler and we enter the rainy season, where we typically get a few days of rain every two weeks until April.
The hips ripen starting in late September and continuing to early November. I harvest them when the hips show a bit of orange Thanksgiving weekend, I harvest them even if green. Each time that I harvest hips, I put the hips unshelled into the plastic sandwich baggie that I’ve labeled for that cross and put the baggie in the coolest part of my fridge: the vegetable bin, which is around 35 degrees.
On a nice-weather day or two during the Christmas holiday, I shell all the hips, soak the seeds from each cross for 10 seconds in a solution of 1 part Clorox to 10 parts water and then immediately plant them in flats, where they get almost no direct sun and the temps are typically 50-60 during the day, 35-45 at night. Because of my low germination rate and lack of space, I plant 3 seeds in the same spot and the next group of 3, two inches away. Thus, in standard 16x16 flat, I can plant about 200 seeds. If two germinate close to each other, I use a narrow teaspoon to lift it and transfer it to a 2" x 5" black plastic pot.
I store mine in a bag in the fridge also, usually for two or three months, until some seeds start to germinate.
One difference is that I take the seeds out of the hip as soon as I am able after harvesting and store in damp paper towel for the stratification. It seems, if I remember correctly, that I read on this forum somewhere that extra time in the hips may have something to do with delayed germination. Something to do with a chemical, but I can’t remember exactly.
I’m not sure what type of crosses you are doing, if stratification is as important.as it is with my crosses.
Duane
One thing that jumps out at me about your method is that you are not taking advantage of red light. I think that this forum has a number of posts about red light and rose seed germination. Unfortunately the search procedure in this forum (in my experience) is worthless. There is a method to search this forum using Google. Can anyone refresh my memory?
I think your “problem” may be that you leave the seed too long on the bush, or in the hips
If you wait for the hips to rippen naturally, you risk that your seeds have a longer dormancy, or are harder to “wake up”.
I usually try to allow hips to develop a fair amount of color on the plant before harvesting them. I remove the achenes relatively soon after harvest and allow them to dry fully, and especially with important crosses, I try to scratch or abrade the thin aril-like coating after removal, since it seems to impede drying and can act as a barrier to external moisture and microbial activity. Once the achenes are fully dried, when I am ready to stratify them, I soak the achenes for around 8-12 hours or overnight in water and then put them into moist stratification medium (usually a mixture of peat moss and compost, often with some composted manure content) to be refrigerated them until they germinate, usually in around one to five months. This has given me consistently higher germination rates than other variations I’ve tried.
It is frequently stated that hips should not be allowed to ripen too long. Some say the you should harvest soon after fruit changes color and some advise to harvest fruits even when green. I harvest my seeds after about 120 days of pollination without bothering to worry about the hip color.
I harvest my fruits after about 120 days of pollination without bothering about the color change after storing the seeds ( not hips ) in the fridge for minimum 3 months before sowing.