It may be a good thing that your seeds are germinating a little later. I started mine too early this year and have some that are 2 months old already. Since I won’t be able to plant them outside for another 3 months they’ll be 5 months old by that time and they’re pretty big already. Since you have green house space available that might not be as big of an issue for you.
I do like your crosses because you’re using both Knock Out and Carefree Sunshine quite a bit. I’ve been using Carefree Sunshine mostly as a seed parent for a number of years with very little sucess. I am going to try it one more time this year both as a seed parent and as a pollen parent and hopefully I’ll have better sucess. I haven’t used Knock Out myself but I plan on using Double Knock Out this year. But I can’t believe you got a Knock Out x William Baffin cross to take, I had always heard how little female fertility Knock Out had. Also it’ll be interesting to hear how well you Cuthbert Grant crosses do because I got one last year and haven’t used it yet in any crosses. It is a triploid so it probably won’t have the best female fertility though.
I’m curious to see how long I can ignore some of the sprouting trays in the cooler, because I really don’t have room for hundreds of OP seedlings either. Too soon to fire up the greenhouses.
I think that KO x WB has been my only successful germination from KO; at least it’s the only one still around.
Cuthbert Grant x Morden Fireglow is bound to have really nice color and very poor disease resistance; it seems like MF is really good at passing along those two characteristics. It will be interesting to see if the weak stems of Cuthbert Grant get passed on.
It is interesting how some people have luck with germinating Carefree Sunshine (ie Julie Overom) and others don’t (Bill Radler and yourself). Is it at germination that you’ve had trouble or does it not even set hips? It sets these beautiful fat hips for me. This is the first year I’ve planted many of it’s seeds, so I don’t know about germination rates, but these early germinations are a good sign.
I’d love to visit your yard some time, Paul. Likewise it would be great if you could visit if you get up north. (The same invitation stands for everyone; stop by the next time you’re on your way to Fargo, ND!)
I would say half of the crosses with CS had very poor hip set and seed set with zero germinations. A few had good hip set but poor seed numbers and poor germination. A cross with Julie’s EGS1 had really good hip set with 194 seeds, but only two seedlings. The only cross that had a good number of seedlings was with (George Vancouver x R.alba semi-plena) as the pollen parent. But CS is somewhat susceptible to powdery mildew and so is (GV x R.asp) so most of the seedlings got PM pretty bad and they were culled. I only have two seedlings of that cross left but they are both very small, which is odd because (GV x R.asp) was easily 6’ tall. Because (GV x R.asp) was the most sucessful cross I’m going to concentrate on using roses with either Explorer or OGR roses in their lineage as the pollen parent this year.
Sure you could visit my garden anytime you’re down in the Cities (I’m about 40 miles west of Minneapolis). But it’s not much because I don’t have that many roses. I don’t get up your way very much; in fact I’ve only been up there twice in my life, once when I was 15 and another time about 5 or 6 years ago with my wife. We were looking for her great-great grand mother’s grave site just west of Bemidji. It was a fruitful trip, she found the grave site and I scored some hips.
FWIW, Carefree Sunshine here in KS tended to drop hips rather early and had fairly low germination as a seed parent. But with it as a pollen parent the range was 5-60 % in different combinations. With Carefree Beauty as female it was around 1/3 but I don’t seem to have kept any of the 140 + seedlings out of >400 seeds (>10/hip). Color intensity of the yellow is a real issue. But I do have one good seedling using C.S. on Carefree Copper, a clear yellow semi, once-blooming bush that looks like a foetida. Likewise for a cross the other way… The CS x CC cross did give a fair number of repeat-blooming in a range of colors. But not many of them have advanced to getting to be part of the next generation- poor vigor, disease problems, few flowers, weak colors. It looks like CS-OP benefits from calcium nitrate treatment. I’ve not had enough seeds of crosses to do a matched test on nitrate.
Here is my lastest to bloom, it’s a (Morden Centennial) OP seedling. But based on the size and shape of the flower it could be a cross with Snowdrift which is right next to MC, but I know it’s too early to be speculating. I was planning on doing that cross this year, maybe the bees beat me to it.
I was shocked to see that Morden Centennial is the parent of All the Rage. Apparently healthy things can come out of it. I wonder if All the Rage has any of that Morden Centennial hardiness.
So often you get exactly the opposite you are looking for in a cross! But this time this seedling gave me exactly what I wanted (so far). This is the first bloom of a tiny Fabulous! x Brass Band seedling - she has Fabulous! mildew-proof foliage and gave me a very large (for her 3" plant size) strong yellow, Fabulous!-type bloom. Now to keep her alive, lol!
Not a new germination, but one which germinated back in 2010, when the rose seed came up like weeds. This one got pushed up under a Hibiscus liliflorus and forgotten. I was planting other seeds today when I happened to notice a flower I didn’t recognize and pulled this one out, literally. It had grown through the bottom of its gallon can and is now in a two gallon.
It isn’t anything “special” and very much looks like Ralph’s Carolyn Dean, until you see the tag. Momma was Marie Pavie. Daddy was Mutabilis! There is a bit of mildew, which is to be expected with the weather we’re having and the soil was very depleted. I’m sure it suffered quite a bit of water stress and got very little sun. The fragrance is rather strong and quite sweet. I’m going to have to watch how this one develops.
I think the trait of singular petalage is quite strong when using Mutabilis. I was lucky when I crossed Safrano with Mutabilis, SAFMUT was the result. I have an OP seedling of Mutabilis which the seed plant Mutabilis was situated in a mass of David Austin roses, I managed only to get one seedling but it is semi double and a beautiful shade of light pink. It repeats very quickly so I will be able to get a pic so you can have a squizz. Almost forgot, SAFMUT was used to pollinate Ithaca which set a hip and the seed in now in the refrigderator stratifying.
Surprisingly I have some ‘Knock Out’ seeds germinating. I didn’t expect that I would get any to germinate based on what I’ve read about the level of difficulty. Should be interesting to see what comes from those. I’m assuming they will be pink and most likely singles. Hopefully horizontal resistance will be carried forward.
Thanks! So far it hasn’t faded much, but then it’s only one bloom in a vase. I sure wish it had fragrance but other than that, so far, so good for a seedling first bloom.
