Just so you know what I’ve been up to:
I made 158 crosses last year, which resulted in 67 hips according to my spreadsheet. But it was probably less, because I only registered failed hips if I found them. This finally resulted in about 110 seedlings of which 88 were big enough to be planted out yesterday.
What I learned this year:
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Sowing seeds in flats after stratification and then potting them up later works much better than transferring each individual germinated seed from the frigde onto a pot.
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Planting the seedlings in bigger pots than last year worked much better (I used very small pots last year and potted them up into bigger pots later on. Now I planted the seedlings from the flats directly into the somewhat bigger pots).
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Make one cross multiple times to get at least about 50 seeds, so everything becomes easier because of larger numbers. Because of time constraints, I left many of the one-hip-few-seeds crosses in the fridge and still have to sow them (they’re probably all rotten by now).
I planted out the following combinations yesterday:
Graham Thomas x Baby Love (15)
Aprikola x Abraham Darby (8)
Aprikola x Golden Celebration (13)
Aprikola x Livin Easy (10)
Aprikola x OP (3)
Aprikola x Graham Thomas (7)
Gebrueder Grimm x Abraham Darby (9)
Gebrueder Grimm x OP (5)
Westerland x Golden Celebration (3)
Graham Thomas x Gebrueder Grimm (2)
Harvest Song x Abraham Darby (2)
Livin Easy x Graham Thomas / Bernstein Rose (4)
Bonica x Livin Easy (1)
Livin Easy x Abraham Darby (1)
Rugelda x Winchester Cathedral (1)
Erfurt x OP (1)
Bernstein Rose x Rugelda (1)
Westerland x (R. virginiana x R. macrophylla) (2)
This last cross seems to be a self, since one seedling bloomed already and the flower was yellow. The foliage also looks typically modern.
Now let there be flowers!
Rob