Russ, There is hope. I only had 5 seedlings from two yrs. effort, of which only two have bloomed, and I planted both into the garden because they looked good considering the position of having nothing. I will be removing one of them tomorrow, because this yr. I have over 700 seedlings, (and they are continuing to sprout, but have slowed down considerably) and today I planted out the first ten that I considered decent(my standards are not very high yet-if it looks good, I’m very happy with it and consider it a success). I am down to approximately 300 seedlings, with about 100 yet to bloom, and an easy 100 more to “discard”, although I have found that hard to do, even though I can see that they are inferior.
I have learned by trying something different this year, and each year I have gone back and reread the different blogs, links, sites, the RHA booklets, and this year I accidentally lucked into something that worked for me. I am writing this from southern California, and we get winter nights that vary from 30 to 45 degrees, and the days vary from approx. 45 to 60 degrees, with occasional spikes. I left the seeds, each in their labeled zip locked baggies, encased in moist sand (much like what several sites recommend) on a bar stool on the patio, where they were subjected to the normal 30 to 60 degree fluctuations, for 60 days. I checked them, intending to put them in the fridge for 60 days, since this was the end of Dec., and discovered a small (20-30)number of germinations. I planted these up, and checked back in two weeks, without refrigerating these, and had 110 germinations, and the next two weeks another 100. That was the end of January, and I decided to skip the fridge, and each two week period produced anywhere from 30-50 new sprouts. It is now down to about 10 every two weeks,(haven’t checked this week-it’s a Sunday thing) but many of the first seedlings are on their 2nd or third bloom, I have approx. 30 more tagged to go out into the garden, and I was ready to give up if it didn’t work this yr. I did review what I did wrong-no protection from rodents(mice, fruit rats, rabbits,gophers) disease, not enough fertilizer, to much water on too young seedlings, using a poor seedling soil mix, etc. I have corrected all those, because that was something I could do, and with a little luck, I am up to my elbows in rose offspring. I think that if I was you, I would probably try several methods, take notes, make comparisons, because there is more than one correct way to germinate, and grow seedlings. Best of LUCK!