Has anyone considered crossing some of the Explorer Series roses? Granted, they can get big, many have pink flowers, are prone to spot diseases. Most have quite hardy.
Are spot diseases most prevalent during the growing season or do they become more noticeable in August and September when the hardy roses are starting to get ready for fall?
So far I haven’t had too many issues with disease pressure, but as I add more roses to the garden, I expect them to happen.
Welcome back, svencal! It’s good to “see” you!
About 5 years ago I had an opportunity to buy a foreclosed farm with some acreage and I took a chance on it. I then sold by Minneapolis house and haven’t looked back.
The house and buildings were decent, but they needed updating. As well as the driveway and septic.
I brought a lot of the plants and roses with. Now it time to build tall fences to keep the varmints out. I have already started laying out a new rose and vegetable garden as well as rebuilding a large greenhouse.
I now have the space to try different rose crosses and grow out the results. I still grow some of the tender roses in black plastic landscape pots and are brought into the barn or basement for the winter.
Congratulations! Good luck on resisting the varmints!
Hey svencal,
Here at the Radler rosarium we have a few explorer roses that we use in our breeding program. We use them with our more winter tender roses to bring more hardiness into our genetics. The results have been hit or miss. Lots of seedlings tend to be onces, especially from ‘John Davis’. ‘Emily Carr’ has been a decent mom for us with the offspring being very vigorous, almost too much. I would recommend the newer 49th parallel series which include ‘Oscar Peterson’ and ‘Chinook Sunrise’. They have similar hardiness to the explorer roses and tend to stay more compact. We are finding them to be pretty fertile as mothers and pollen parents. Also most of the 49th parallel roses have Radler genetics in them! Best of luck to you.
Just started recently with Oscar Peterson and have also found it to be a good parent…sets hips well…first offspring showing up now, so too early to judge, but so far very healthy.
I’ve used a few of the Explorers, mostly as pollen parents… John Cabot has given me some nice somewhat restrained seedlings. William Baffin seedlings tend to be more like climbers for me. I have a Prairie Celebration/Champlain seedling that is a garage eater. Prairie Celebration is an OK seed parent. The Explorer that I am most excited about right now is Campfire, as a pollen parent. Its seedlings tend to be compact and it is a yellow bi-color.
Here on the eastern-side of Vancouver Island, as my double yellow Lady Banks’ rose is showing colour on its buds, so are J. P. Connell and Quadra! Based on the experience of others on here, I’ve pulled Quadra up onto my deck for use as a seed-parent. Maybe I’ll put the JPC-pollen on it, although Q has never formed an OP hip for me; they are a pretty tightly-packed, quartered type flower.
It’s pretty exciting though.