PAGES and TRANSLATION

Well, I might be on break from tending the roses, but I made good use of this downtime by adding a new feature to this blog.  Introducing:  PAGES !  These are where I'll show you a representative sample of my rose seedlings and keep you abreast of their growth.  The pages are accessible via tabs, which you will see above the first post in this blog (underneath GREETINGS).  From a page, you can skip to any other page, and you can always come back to HOME.     And for my rose growing friends around the world, I have added a TRANSLATION tab, seen at the top of this blog.

A "crown" befitting a Queen

Just one more thing before I go on Winter break.  I wanted to show you something from the garden, where the roses are enjoying their much deserved rest.  One of my 'Queen Elizabeth' seedlings has a remarkably symmetrical crown.  This is something that you are not very likely to see on other roses, especially the budded kind.  This bush is just 1 month shy of being 4 years old.

Birthday: 1/23/2008    Photo taken: 12/17/2011

First bloom: 6/26/2008

Update of June 2, 2012:   The "birthday" of January 23, 2008 is significant, because this seedling is the first of all of my seedlings to be born here in Salem.  The seedling is now 4 years and 4 months old; it is a substantial rose bush standing nearly 6 feet tall.  Below are a couple of photos that I took today.  The first photo revisits the seedling's crown which has been cleared of a few non-productive canes and has added a few new ones.  I hope that the second photo does justice to this really impressive rose bush.

Update of August 14, 2012:   I had to back away today to fit most of the rose bush into the next photo.  I measured its height to be exactly 7 feet, and it's a little bit older now, at 4 years and 7 months.

Winter break

 I'm happy to have shared with you my knowledge of growing roses from seed.  It's time to take a Winter break.  Please consider revisiting this blog occasionally -- I'm planning to have some new and exciting photos of my roses posted next growing season.  For now, the roses are in the backyard taking a break, too,  as can be seen in the following photo:

I'm going to let the moss take over.  That should make for an unusual rose garden floor.  All of the roses in the big bed (except for two 'Queen Elizabeth' roses) were grown from seed.

I just knew this was a seedy blog

In my previous post,  I explained what to do to obtain ripe hips that will contain viable seeds.  Within a day or so after harvesting the hips, I open them, extract the seeds, and then plant the seeds without delay.  (Remember: you may need to pre-chill your hips/seeds if you live in a warmer climate.)   I like to use Miracle-Gro Potting Mix, with which I fill 3 inch pots, and then add water to moisten the soil.  I plant 4-5 seeds per pot at a depth of around a quarter of an inch.   I put as many of the pots that will fit onto those black plastic tray things that come with transparent domes and then place them on a table close to a window at regular room temperature.  Then it's time to wait !    The majority of my seeds germinate at around 3 to 5 months, with a few as early as 1½ months.  Around the month of March the following Spring, I move the covered tray outdoors and wait some more.  After 6 months or so, I pretty much shut it down, if you know what I mean.   If you have lived a righteous life, your seeds will begin to sprout like this:

Wow, that looks like a giant pot !   Actually, it's one of those 3 inch pots into which I planted 4 seeds around the corners (but not too close to the sides) and maybe a fifth seed in the center.  The pot is sitting on a window sill so that the little rose seedling will get better light.  The photo was taken on the seedling's "birthday" -- January 13, 2011.  After a couple of weeks or so, I VERY GENTLY extricate the seedling and move it to its own larger (4 inch) pot.

I think I get around a 20 percent germination rate.  Unfortunately, you'll find that not all seedlings are created equal and that some will die within a few weeks.  That's just the way it is.  The majority seem to survive, and those are the ones that I shuttle outdoors in their 4 inch pots to "harden off" as weather permits.  I always place the outdoor pots behind protective fencing, so that squirrels will not be digging around.  In fact, even after I plant the seedling out in the garden, I'll use protective fencing for all of the first growing season and a good part of the second.  Here's a photo that demonstrates what I'm talking about (click on the photo to enlarge it):

See, no squirrels !  The above plant is a seedling of the hybrid tea rose named 'Voodoo'.  The seedling was born on April 29, 2011 and the photo was taken today, December 7, 2011.  Here's what the seedling's first bloom looked like (the protective screen was briefly removed);  the photo was taken on July 8, 2011:

So there you have it -- the "Secrets of the Temple".   As you probably already know, there is a wealth of information about growing roses from seed out there on the Internet.  Choose whatever methods that you can get comfortable with, and GOOD LUCK  !

The hipster

To be a hipster, you're going to have to be a little backward.  Let me explain.  Normally, you should be deadheading spent blooms on your roses to encourage your plants to keep growing and blooming throughout the Summer and into Fall.  If you want hips that contain viable seeds, however, you'll need to let hips develop and remain on the bush until they get nice and mature.  Here is my backward scheme --
Here in Salem, I leave blooms alone until the end of July, maybe gently plucking off unsightly petals (but no more than that).  Remember, I let nature take its course, and depend on open ( or self) pollination.  This allows about 1½ months of blooms to develop hips (middle of June through the end of July).  Beginning in August, I deadhead all the NEW blooms after they are spent, leaving the earlier hips alone (they should resemble hips by then).  I harvest the hips at the end of November, or before the first hard freeze (under 25 degrees).  This guarantees that the hips have aged for at least 4 months, namely August through November.  Hips on various rose types do not necessarily turn a rich orange or reddish color when they mature.  Hips on my 'Queen Elizabeth' and 'Voodoo' roses turn a very slight shade of orange.  So, the above method avoids any confusion concerning older and newer hips because there are NO newer hips.  As a matter of fact, the strong 'Queen Elizabeth' rose will continue blooming very nicely even while still retaining its early hips.  You didn't realize you were a hipster, did you?

I should add that here in the central Willamette Valley, the month of November does just fine for getting the seeds "stratified" as the hips are ripening on the bush.  If you live in a warmer region of the world, you will probably need to refrigerate your hips/seeds for a month or so.

The BIG rose

A couple of posts back (see "A Seattle garden"), I highlighted the great 'Queen Elizabeth' rose, and its willingness to grow rather big.  That was just what I needed to produce some vigorous rose seedlings to populate my new garden in Salem, Oregon.  I wasn't disappointed.   To circumvent the dilution of the gene pool, I just let my purchased 'Queen Elizabeth' roses open pollinate, which most likely meant self pollinate.  I also had another motive for this.  With self pollination, I would basically re-shuffle the gene pool and maybe get a better idea wherefrom 'Queen Elizabeth' came.  Rose "bibles" say that its parents were 'Charlotte Armstrong' (seed) and 'Floradora' (pollen).  In turn, the parents of  'Charlotte Armstrong'   were 'Soeur Therese' (seed) and 'Crimson Glory' (pollen), whereas the parents of 'Floradora' were 'Baby Chateau' (seed) and Rosa roxburghii (pollen).  Pictures of all of these roses can be seen on Google Images.  There's not a BIG rose in that bunch, except for R. roxburghii.  But what I wanted to know was this: was it R. roxburghii plena (the rose with LOTS of petals), or was it R. roxburghii normalis (described as having 4 to 8 petals); again, both can be seen on Google Images.  Rose literature is unclear about which roxburghii Mathias Tantau, the German hybridizer, used to pollinate 'Baby Chateau' when he bred 'Floradora'.

My guess is that it was R. roxburghii normalis.  My seedlings from 'Queen Elizabeth' are showing quite a few "singles", namely rose plants having blooms of 5 petals or so.  Below, I'll show you some of my seedlings at the time they opened their first bloom.  This coming Summer, I'll take some photos of the grown-up plants, so stay tuned.  Click on the photos to enlarge them.  Also, note that it usually doesn't take very long for a rose seedling to show you its first bloom.                                                                 

Update of May 28, 2012:   The grown-up rose bushes are starting to bloom -- to see them, click on the "Queen Elizabeth seedlings" tab at the top of this blog.

Seedling born 3/04/2009, first bloom 5/31/2009

Seedling born 4/04/2009, first bloom 6/10/2009

Seedling born 3/23/2009, first bloom 7/05/2009

                           

Switching gears, here now is an example of a full blossomed seedling from 'Queen Elizabeth': 

Seedling born 3/26/2009, first bloom 6/10/2009

And here is the same rose just two years later (June 26, 2011), standing as tall as I am -- 5½ feet !

Note the 'Queen Elizabeth' bloom in the foreground.

  

This paragraph is for SERIOUS ROSE DETECTIVES:  for many years, it was thought that Mathias Tantau had used Rosa multibracteata as the pollen parent when he hybridized 'Floradora'.  Pictures of Rosa multibracteata as well as Rosa roxburghii normalis may be seen on Google Images.  Things get more interesting because Herb Swim, a great American rose hybridizer, came to the conclusion that 'Floradora' was the result of a SELF pollination of 'Baby Chateau' (refer to page 76 of Swim's book:  "-- ROSES --  from Dreams to Reality", published in 1988).  One might say that the ancestry of the 'Queen Elizabeth' rose remains SHROUDED IN MYSTERY !

Onward to Oregon

In March of 2007 I moved again, this time to Salem, Oregon, thus completing the West-coast trifecta of California, Washington, and Oregon.  I left all the Seattle roses in place, hoping the next residents would enjoy them.  In Salem, I began again to construct a rose garden, but this time growing my own roses from seed.  I discovered that one rose bush already existed on the property.  Thankfully, it had a tag identifying itself as the hybrid tea rose named 'Voodoo'.   Great, I would just let it grow some hips and then have its seeds ready for planting in November, 2007.  The next course of business in March was to head over to the local Fred Meyer's and purchase some bagged bare root 'Queen Elizabeth' roses.  Promptly planted, they also yielded hips and seeds for late 2007.   In the Summer of 2008, I was the recipient of some hips (from 3 unknown rose varieties) sourced from Germany.  I planted the seeds from those hips outdoors, in a patch of ground, that Summer.  Some of these German seeds germinated in the Fall of 2008, and some the following Spring.  { IMPORTANT NOTE:  Normally I harvest hips in late November and plant their seeds in small pots for germinating indoors.  If you plant your seeds outdoors, you MUST protect your seedlings from slugs and cutworms and such.  I do it by potting up the seedlings  just a couple of days after they surface and then placing the pots in a protected location.  You will find that outdoor-grown seedlings are tougher than indoor-grown seedlings, and can be handled early on; however, be very careful when you pot them up. }

To summarize:  all of my rose seedlings have been grown from 'Voodoo' seeds, 'Queen Elizabeth' seeds, and seeds of unknown German roses.

So, here's how the garden looked in October of 2009.  Most of the roses were grown from seed.  Click on the photos to enlarge them.

And, after growing and adding new seedlings to the garden from 2008 through 2011, here's how the garden looked in late June of 2011.  All except 2 roses were grown from seed.  Can you identify one of the 'Queen Elizabeth' roses?

As a bonus, here's a video of the grounds that I took in July of 2011.  It's also viewable on YouTube under the title:  Rose garden panorama(2011).

  

Note that at the bottom of this blog you will see a live link to "My YouTube Videos".  Click on it and you will be directed to, what else, a stack of all of my rose seedling related YouTube videos.

A Seattle garden

In late 1996 I bought a house in Seattle and proceeded to carve out rose gardens in both front and back yards.  I grew store-bought roses for several years, the result being what you see in the following photos:
 

Front yard

Back yard

Of particular note is the tall pink-blossomed rose growing to a height exceeding that of the patio cover.  The plant was the 'Queen Elizabeth' rose.  Since I am an advocate of light pruning, the rose plant was very obliging and grew to over 10 feet tall !  I was glad to get on a step ladder to deadhead this plant -- anything to keep it happy.  It made such an impression on me that I chose this rose variety again as the mainstay of my rose growing when I switched to growing roses from seed.  This was after I moved from Seattle to Salem, Oregon in 2007.

Predisposition (Ontario, CA)

Although the previous post (below) describes my latter-day "hands on" introduction to roses, there's SOMETHING about my days as a young lad that may have predisposed me to this "way of life".  Growing up in Ontario, California in the 1950s, I was surrounded by beauty, including ROSE beauty as seen in the following photos --

Climbing roses beautifying handsome block walls in both front and back yards !   THAT'S IT !  Everything you see above was built and planted by my Dad, with some help from his sons (and my Mom, who liked Easter lilies as well as roses).

So how did you get started in roses, anyway?

Not a long story.  Back in 1991, when I moved into an apartment in the University District in Seattle, my nice Croatian landlady planted some roses in front of my unit (she was celebrating, no doubt, the departure of the previous bad tenant).  She allowed me to care for the roses, and I became particularly enamored with a very fragrant "blue" rose, which I later determined to be the hybrid tea rose named 'Blue Girl'.  From then on, I was hooked on roses.  To see pictures of this rose, search Google Images for "Blue Girl rose".   Also, look below and you will see the plant that I am referring to, right in front of my Seattle apartment circa 1996 --

It's the rose on the right.  But notice the smaller red flowers below the lavender/blue large blooms.  The plant was shooting up suckers from its root-stock, which apparently was the great root-stock rose called 'Dr. Huey' (can also be seen on Google Images by searching for "Dr. Huey rose").  Needless to say, this kind of thing will NOT happen when you grow roses from seed !

So what's that photo on Mike's profile ?

I'm glad you asked.  It's a seedling of mine that I grew using the 'Queen Elizabeth' rose as a parent.  It was the result of open pollination, which very likely was "self" pollination.  Here's a closer look at my rose, which has the characteristics of a floribunda.  The photo was taken on July 7, 2011.

At the time of the photo,  the above rose was in its 3rd growing season, because its birthday was April 11, 2009.  It should be said that the 'Queen Elizabeth' rose itself is not white.  For some nice pictures, search Google Images for the "Queen Elizabeth rose".  Very nice rose, and very pink.

One thing I do without exception is to take a photo of each of my seedlings when it opens up its very first bloom.  For the above rose, that day was July 10, 2009, just 3 months after the rose's birthday !  Here's a photo of that first bloom --

An Introduction

I've been growing roses from seed for a few years now.  My objective was not to create clones of given roses (taking cuttings or doing budding will accomplish that), but rather create one-of-a-kind roses.  Modern hybrid tea and floribunda roses have been crossed and re-crossed so many times, they are good candidates for developing new and unique roses.  I have taken the easy path and just let the parent plants undergo open pollination, which in the rose-world is probably going to be "self" pollination.    In later posts, I will relate the reasons why I chose the particular parent roses that I have used for creating seedlings.   For now, let's just show a picture of a seedling on its "birthday", which I will define to be the day that the seedling surfaces above the soil.  Believe me, I watch the seedling pots like a hawk, and I never miss a day -- I KNOW the birthdays !  So, let's take a look at a seedling whose birthday was January 13, 2011.  Its parent was a hybrid tea rose named 'Voodoo', photos of which can be seen by searching Google Images for "the Voodoo rose".   Here's a photo of the seedling --

As you read through the above posts and pages, I want you to carry the following thought with you.  It's true that all the major rose breeders and hybridizers must cull their annual seedling crops, eliminating thousands every year and retaining a very select few for commerce.  The perceived wisdom is that we, the rose hobbyists, won't grow anything good if we grow roses from seed.  In my garden, except for half a dozen seedlings that couldn't retain their foliage, I have held on to every seedling that didn't die, when small, of natural causes.  So now my large rose bed and driveway are graced with a full complement of my own rose bushes.  Although they have different degrees of vigor and growth habit, I wouldn't trade any of them for store-bought roses.