Rose Babies: Becoming a rose hybridizer

As I put together my rose garden this spring, I realized how expensive rose bushes had gotten.  I finally went to a good nursery in a not-so-good neighborhood and got my rose bushes for a decent price.  They ranged from $12.00 to $25.00 depending on the size, breed, and age of the plant.  I saw roses in other places for $40 - $60, and said "I don't think so!" I had visions of a new, bigger rose garden in my backyard.  But I certainly couldn't afford to buy that many new roses.  I definitely couldn't afford all the new, pretty, cool looking hybrids that I coveted.

I began looking into growing roses from seed.  I had several new plants as potential parents.  I saw that it would be pretty easy to let my rose plants produce seed and try my hand at growing baby roses.  But, I wanted more.  Instead of letting my roses pollinate freely, I wanted to create my babies.

I did have some experience to draw from.  The summer after I finished high school, I worked for a seed company.  My job was to cross pollinate soybeans - taking pollen from one plant and using it to fertilize another plant, with the purpose of creating new breeds with good traits.  I knew my way around a plant and knew how to create hybrid breeds.  So, with a little research, I decided that I would hybridize my own roses - selecting parents to create new rose varieties.  Really, it was just for fun - I wanted to have a lot of roses for my new garden, I wanted unusual and interesting plants, and I looked forward to challenging myself in doing something that not everyone can succeed at.

But, I had a limited number of roses to work with, and it would be late summer or fall before I had any seeds to harvest.  Since I was impatient, I got on the Internet and found some rose seeds with interesting parents.  I figured I could start my first rose seedlings from purchased seed, and then plant later crops with seed my own plants produced.  Buying seed also gave me the potential to have more parent plants to work with next year.

I researched how to grow roses from seed, and found out that it can be challenging.  Many people reported a low germination rate, and losing a lot of seedlings to damp off.  So, I ordered 30 seeds from 9 parents.  Each seed type cost me less than $3.00. I chose what I considered beautiful or unique: unusual colors, multicolored, striped. I will go into greater detail about growing roses from seed on the next entry - for now I'll just tell you about my overall experience.

Most perennial plant seeds benefit from stratification - a cold treatment that simulates winter.  Not everyone agrees that this is necessary, but a lot of growers believe that stratification treatments give you better germination rates.  For roses, typical stratification periods are around 3 months.  I was impatient and intended to treat my seeds 4-6 weeks.  Instead, after about 2 1/2 weeks, I found that my seeds were already germinating!  So I pulled them from cold treatment and planted them in a seed starter.

I was in for a big surprise.  Since most people seemed to agree that germination was low for rose seeds, I planted them all.  And got almost 100% germination.  In fact, I must have been given extra seeds, because at one point I was pushing 400 seedlings instead of the 270 I assumed I had planted.  Here is a picture of my seedlings as they were just starting to emerge:



My seedlings grew like crazy and I was astounded.  In fact, I wasn't prepared - they weren't in a spot with enough sun, and they quickly became overgrown and leggy.  I am still working on correcting that as they are getting bigger.

So, I had A LOT of rose seedlings.  I was treating them to prevent fungal disease, and they took off.  Once they started getting true leaves, I started transplanting them out of the seed trays - this was only a couple of weeks after planting.  The trays were overcrowded (because I didn't expect so many plants!) and pulling them out was difficult.  I broke some of the seedlings, and others were just too overgrown and weak.  But I still ended up with hundreds of individually potted rose babies.

The next problem was where to put them???  I definitely didn't have room in my house, and I have limited areas of sunshine in my yard.  I didn't want all these little pots to be in the way when my husband mowed, but I was afraid to put them on a table because a good thunderstorm would send them flying.  I finally located about half of them on a shaded porch that had bright indirect light, and the other half I put behind the garage, on some cleared soil that was located in between some new bushes I put in this year.  The bushes will fill in over time, but for now it was open for my use & didn't need mowed.

Here are my seedlings at about 4-6 weeks old:

Now, a couple of months later, I have lost some plants - to disease, bugs, hungry critters, or because they just weren't strong enough.  I'm cool with that.  I do not need 400 rose plants.  And I want the strong ones, so I figure whatever survives has made the first of many cuts.  Once the babies went outside, I didn't treat for disease or bugs.  And I still have a lot of plants left. 

Now, a couple of months after planting, I am starting to see the first blooms on my rose babies.  This is the really exciting part - getting that first glimpse of what the flowers will look like.  Of course, the number and shape of the petals look nothing like an adult rose bloom, but I can get an idea of colors.

As my plants start to bloom, I am finding my expectations are again being completely blown away.  With hybrid plants, offspring from seeds are not identical to the parents.  I knew that my babies would most likely not look like the parent plants.  I just hoped for some of the unique traits to come through.  I expected a lot of red and pink roses, since these are the default colors.  But out of my first three blooming rose seedlings, all three are purple!!  I was pleasantly surprised. I continue to find this experience unlike what I expected, but I just shrug and take it as it is.  Since a lot of my extra plants will go to friends and family, I hope they like purple! 

I am so glad that I started this project this summer.  I still plan to do some cross pollinating and create more new rose breeds.  It would be cool to produce a really special plant - but mostly, it's just fun.  It is amazing to see these roses that are brand new - no one else has one.  I will keep the plants I really like, give away a lot to my friends and family, and if I have extras I may sell them off.  $5 for a unique first year rose surely beats spending $50 on a rose bush at the nursery that you can see in any neighbor's yard.  I will continue to learn as I go, and over the years I plan to put together one amazing rose garden.  In addition, I will probably expand my breeding horizons - I am already eyeing the day lily hybrids that produce seed so readily!

Next up: Rose Babies: How to grow roses from seed