What is your current choice of stratification medium?

Roselynn, Do you have some news of your experiment?

I don’t, all germination happens during autumn and winter for me, it’s the first day of winter here and many of the seeds I planted the early autumn (march) have tiny little flower buds. Hurray Australia!
I never had much success with stratifying of any species (alstromeria, tulips, iris reticulata, etc) it’s more rare for me to see anything germinate from it at all…clearly doing something wrong or just extremely unlucky.

Hi Plazbo.
Can you explain your method and what roses you are using please. Also which part of this great bit of dirt are you located in.

Regards David.

Harvest seeds end of Feb/beginning of March, sown within a week in small flats (or in reality, ferrero rocher chocolate clear plastic containers, easy to maintain moisture, they sit behind glass so mileage may vary if in direct UV) with maybe an inch of potting medium, they germinate and develop a few true leaves and get transplanted, shallow = super easy transplant, then into 68mm forestry tubes (carry trays hurray!) until they get culled or moved into bigger pots. This is the 3rd year of around 300 rose seedlings, the tubes are generally empty by mid spring…just playing around seeing what appears, culling off mildew and spot babies primarily, bit exploratory, only 4th year of rose seedlings. Still acquiring genes and thoughts getting closer to developing tangible goals and a plan…probably this season or next will see things ramp up beyond just curiosity.

I’m in Sydney, my roses are in two locations for now, most of the mini’s are with me in Sydney (limited space) as are a few other slightly bigger roses that are happy (or at least, flower without issue) in pots. Bigger types (and a few poly’s and mini’s) are approx 120km (north) away at parents (no space issues) and in the process of getting certain traits onto much smaller plants.

Mostly just mini’s (because of space and it’s not with commercial intent) but there is a bit of FB, HT, poly and an increasing amount of species/near species happening (if only due to learning about traits that aren’t really in moderns…like foliage fragrance, ordered a few via Thomas for Roses for the upcoming season to see what that is all about).

But yes, just harvest and sow straight away…extremely mild frost free winters doesn’t seem to prevent them growing or flowering except maybe for a month or so during the “coldest” month but even then day temps are usually 10c+ (aka 50f+) which is spring temperatures in many parts of the world.

Hi Rodrigo, the sand seemed to work well. Next time I would prefer to use Petri dishes instead of sandwhich ziploc baggies, as one small issue was seeds rising to the top of the sand when inspected.

Unfortunately most of my crosses did not work, most seeds went black, my guess from not enough hip ripening time.

I am currently trying moistened seeds in a small glass bowl with no other medium, and then I place the bowl inside a ziplock bag, which also seems to be working well.

Thank you Roselynn, I’ve been having trouble with mold in stratification too. Next time I’ll follow a Warren’s advice and use vermiculite as medium.