At a rental store in our village there are about 25 Knock Out roses used in their landscaping. They are mature plants with some being approximately 7x7. I’ve ignored them for years but now that I’ve obtain KO and DKO and am going to work with them, I decided to take a walk down and see how they are doing. Less than 5% BS and very healthy looking over all. I collected about 200 LARGE orange hips and am hoping that with that many that I will get some germination with at least 1 decent F1 to work with. A semi double dark red with scent, health and better fertility would be nice. I’m sure that most will be single pinks. yuck
Most of Knock Out Open Pollinated seedlings, when they germinate, which is not that often, are single deep pink/red blends with no scent and quite a bit inferior to the parent. But you never know. Good luck
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I have tried several times with OP hips from my KO and have never had any of the seeds germinate. But with that many hips I’d have to think something would. I have also used it in crosses and it worked as a pollen parent but not a seed parent for me. However, the seedlings did not survive so I have no idea what it would have looked like or how it would have been health wise. If a remember right I crossed it with Angel Face looking for a mauve that doesn’t spot so bad.
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I’ve never had “hundreds” of seed from KO. I think something less than 13 or so tops in one season… normally around six or seven. Only the largest hips will contain seed, the rest will be empty. Considering that the hips do have prickers, you’ll just hurt your hands tearing them open. Most seedlings will definitely be singles… With outside pollination it IS possible to get colors other than red (putting some yellow in KO seems to be fairly easy) and semi-doubles.
A couple years ago Peter Harris sent me a harvest from WV. In it were quite a few seeds, but rarely more than 1-2 per hip, though I did get some up to 5 or 7 out to f the lot. Germination was below 10 %. His were from mature plants, that went unpruned. I’ve also gotten over 50 from a cluster of plants (three I believe). The distribution of seeds per hip is odd. I think I commented on this in a newsletter.
But the important point is that this past year I dosed with 10 mM calcium nitrate and got much higher germination, and faster all round. That 10 mM works out to something like 1 teaspoon per gallon as I recall. Also written somewhere like newsletter, and I’m too lazy to recalculate. Double KO is twice as good. Rainbow KO is right over the rainbow in terms of %.
I will try to summarize the whole bunch of results in the winter newsletter, after the control seeds have their chance (1 year) cold, to germinate.
Wish me luck with these seeds! I’ll plan on using KO and DKO with very fertile and healthy seed parents next season and hopefully get seedlings that have the healthy of the parents with better fertility. I’ll worry about color and bloom form futher down the line.