So…it has been around two weeks (probably a few days more?) since the 70 achenes were planted.
This morning I was watering this Iceberg OP seed bed, and noticed this lone achene lying close to the surface of the sowing mix:
I am very excited about this!
I am now almost 100% certain that the use of tap water as a medium for cold stratification can work on a percentage of “hard-achened” rose seeds like Iceberg, as well as on soft-achened ones (like in my R. multiflora demonstrations).
I’ll soon post the final germination percentages of this 70 Iceberg OP trial here:
Link: www.rosehybridizers.org/forum/message.php?topid=23111#30797
George
This is really exiting as I jumped the gun after reading your earlier posts and used water on all my seeds.
I have 3500 seeds sown that were all stratified in water. So far I have 10 germinations that have been potted on and they are doing extremely well. The first were up within 3 wks of sowing and while nos. are not great yet it is certain that the principal will work.
It is so clean and easy by comparison with all the other methods I have used and a great space saver as I can fit 250+ seeds comfortably in a 70ml pill bottle, stack them in ice cream containers(1.25ltr) and stack the ice cream containers 4 deep in my small fridge. This leaves plenty of room to store unprocessed hips as well. To inspect or sow I tip them into a gauze strainer and work from there.
Keep up your good work. I like reading your posts they are allways informative.
Russ.
George,
Ditto to Russ’s post above. Was home in NY and plucked a fat hip from the neighbor’s presumed Queen Elizabeth, which unfortunately is virused but still going strong for 20+ years. The hip was half red but had to return to Virginia so had a small window time wise. After a few days, I took the seeds out of the hip(a goodly number)and put them in a clean jar in an inch or so of water after rinsing the seeds several times with a strainer. I am very excited about this method,much thanks to all the generous work you have done for posting pictures and typing the accompanying text and summarizing as you go.
My biggest problem is preventing damping off with the sprouts though this past spring, I followed everyone’s tips and planted them in styrofoam cups as usual but used pure perlite for the medium. I enclose them in baggies- maybe that is my mistake since it keeps them too humid upon sprouting.
Reread all your posts of this method last night. Thank you so much for sharing.
Incidentally, I emailed you twice in the last six months, the second time about a month ago. I wonder if they went through. Found your email in your long post so will use that in the future.
Thanks again for all your sharing. As I said on a previous post, the RHA members are a warm and generous group.
Jim P
Hi Jim! I am glad you are having some fun reading some of my stuff and checking out some of the weird pix LOL! Unfortunately I did not receive either of your two emails, which is too bad, to be sure!! Hope some of your achenes sprout for you!
Hi Russ. WOW! that’s a serious number of seeds! Good luck with them. Russ, from what I am learning here as a relative beginner, I think it would be wise to keep such achenes as you picked in the fridge for like ~6-8 weeks, rather than a lot shorter times, to get the optimal amount of benefit of the cold stratification?!
Jim and Russ: both of you have made comments on this thread about fungus (damp off, fungus in baggies). Russ, I get the feeling you may have noticed less molding when you used tap water as a medium to cold stratify, compared to other (baggie / paper toweling) methods, is that right?
I have noticed that there is like 90% less molding of the refrigerated water saoked achenes at 8 weeks, compared to similarly water soaked achenes that were never refrigerated (left at room temperature to stratify). I don’t know what this translates to ultimately though?! Could it be that too much molding is too much of a good thing?! In any case, I am preferring the “crisp, clean look” of the refrigerated achenes soaked in water, compared to their very moldy non-refrigerated water soaked “cousins”. So, I will not be soaking future achenes at room temperature, instead I will refrigerate them all for like ~8 weeks, or even longer for really thick/cement-like endocarps. In this way, I am hoping to cut down (not wanting to actually eliminate) the amount of molding.
Anyway, this is all fun experimenting!
gvarden at bigpond dot net dot au
George
I did not keep records of what I did but of 40+ seed lots only 2 showed any sign of mold and that was very slight.
My methodology was pretty rough as I was learning as I went
Some seeds got 2+ mths in water some only 1, at times they were at room temp. and at one stage ice formed on top of the water and I even allowed some to dry out pre sowing but nothing but water was used at any time.
As I had 700 seeds collected for germination trial only I would split a few seeds every ? 2wks to see if they were going to rot. I found only that there is a high proportion of shrunken embryos in normal looking seeds, that the water seems to soften the join and make them easier to split and also that no apparent damage occurs.
As I said yesterday it appears that it will be very successful(I have 3 more germinations today) and that the seedlings are very vigorous when transplanted (This could be due to using 50% perlite mix and fertilizing with 10% liquid fertilizer from potting up as soon as the cotyledons stand up) but for whatever reason this looks like my most successful program so far.
Russ.
Thanks for the extra feedback Russ.
I forgot to mention that after sowing these 70 Iceberg OP achenes, I have also watered them daily with the 10% X full strength NPK fertilizer solution. I have come to ADORE this very dilute fertilizer solution for its powerful boosting effect since Jim Sproul made mention of it some months ago now!
I now water all my new rose seedlings with it daily, as well as my new tomato and cucumber seedlings, and the results are continuing to astonish me!
Thank you for the tip, Jim Sproul!
In the case of these 70 OP Iceberg seeds (achenes), given the prevailing climate / temperature conditions, the first seedling popped up today - which is just over 3 weeks since sowing.