Herb Swim mentioned in his book that he pollinated in a greenhouse and I am wondering if this gives a big advantage. I know that I have a lot of things working against me, leading to an inordinate amount of failures, but since many of my roses are in big pots, I COULD move them inside temporarily if it helped. Herb Swim worked only 10 or 20 miles from me, so why do I have such a disaster? Can someone please tell me what benefits are conferred by using a greenhouse?
Many thanks, Linda
Hi Linda:
I do pollinations both inside the greenhouse and outside. The main advantage for me inside is control of the weather. We get rain in the springtime on occasion and that is not good following pollinations. So, on rainy days, I do all of my pollinations in the greenhouse. In northern climates, a greenhouse would also allow you to start breeding earlier, but that is not important to me.
I like pollinating in both areas (in and out) in case there is a disaster (like a power outage and everything fries in the greenhouse - fortunately that has not happened!) In my experience, some roses actually do better outside as hip parents.
Jim Sproul
Linda,
Second what Jim says. We also do pollinating both inside and out. The main advantage for us with the greenhouse is that we can start much earlier up here in WA. When working outside, we need to do all our work in the first bloom cycle in June to give time for the hips to ripen before the first heavy frost. With seed parents in pots in the greenhouse we have made some crosses in late Jan.
John