sunnyvalley said:Neal, your roses are looking good. I haven’t seen much winter damage on the roses I don’t protect either – it has been exceptionally mild so far. The ones where I have pushed the zone a bit are still mounded and covered so it’s hard to tell. Looks like I won’t be opening them up too soon either, winter is back! It snowed last week with more forecast for this week.

Margie – good luck with your seeds!

Philip – agreed, it is a long process but an extremely rewarding one. I am by no means an expert and only started doing my own crosses about five years ago. The chance of creating something totally unique fascinates me! Each seed, even from the same hip, is different. Granted, a lot of the seedlings are similar. When I first started I kept every single one of them. As you can imagine, my pot ghetto became rather large. These days I limit the number of seeds that I sow to about 300 and a lot of them land up on the compost but it is the quest for that special rose that drives me.

These 6 seedlings are all from the same cross and show how different the results can be.

Thanks for the photos SV. They reminded me of something Jack Harkness wrote in one of his books published back around 1975. (My rose mentor made me do a LOT of reading and Jack's books were part of my assigned reading.)

Jack was writing about breeders withholding lineage information about the crosses they used to keep other breeders from copying their work. He said something like it was possible for one cross to have more than 250 million outcomes, so even if the lineage was disclosed, the likelihood of another breeder getting the same rose from the same cross was almost nonexistent. He went on to say, it took the breeder's eye to know which seedlings to save and carry forward and which seedlings to cull.

Your photos certainly prove his point. Good luck with your hybridizing.

Mike, it always amazes me how much cold roses take before the leaves even start showing damage. Typically toward the end of winter the foliage falls off.

Lyn, interesting how breeders wanted to keep lineage secret. Having gotten interested in bearded iris breeding the last couple of years, I've noted that most iris hybridizers do share crossing info. As with roses, there is little chance of the same cross producing an identical plant.

Neal, I imagine that's why you needn't bother handpicking the foliage if you know it will fall off by itself anyway.
Since we don't have those low temps here, I always hand pick the remaining foliage when I prune in January. Otherwise, it hangs on for months, turns ugly colors and looks abysmal. Not to mention what a colossal PITA it is to stand there for hours picking off each leaf. lol

I had an uncle who dabbled in iris crossing and he came up with some really bizarre combinations. He just did it for fun and probably didn't know what he was doing anyway.

Uuggg, I hadn't thought of that- guess there is something positive about living in a colder zone, LOL (I daydream about living in a warmer area). Bad enough picking out the sycamore leaves that have blown in and gotten tangled in the thorny rose canes- just came in from working on that. It's sunny and 63F today, so I've been enjoying some time in the garden. It's windy, but I've been carrying an old laundry basket around and filling it with garden debris and leaves- I can push them down and they don't blow away.

sunnyvalley said:Neal, your roses are looking good. I haven’t seen much winter damage on the roses I don’t protect either – it has been exceptionally mild so far. The ones where I have pushed the zone a bit are still mounded and covered so it’s hard to tell. Looks like I won’t be opening them up too soon either, winter is back! It snowed last week with more forecast for this week.

Margie – good luck with your seeds!

Philip – agreed, it is a long process but an extremely rewarding one. I am by no means an expert and only started doing my own crosses about five years ago. The chance of creating something totally unique fascinates me! Each seed, even from the same hip, is different. Granted, a lot of the seedlings are similar. When I first started I kept every single one of them. As you can imagine, my pot ghetto became rather large. These days I limit the number of seeds that I sow to about 300 and a lot of them land up on the compost but it is the quest for that special rose that drives me.

These 6 seedlings are all from the same cross and show how different the results can be.

Sunvalley,..those are beautiful results and i agree with you its so rewarding to see the results in particular as they are roses.
I posted the results of the Rose Hip i found with the little growth protruding and the following six months progress up to blooming time in my Blog,..scroll down and see the rose it produced,..i still have this bush.

glengarry23's blog (All Things Plants)

Philip, your rose is lovely - what a pretty color!

Mike - some seedlings bloom as early as 6 weeks after germination others take longer. Of this bunch, the first which germinated mid April only bloomed mid September - the last that germinated 25 May already had it's first bloom 11 July.

Lyn - very true and when somebody like Jack Harkness, who I really admire, has no objections to revealing lineage, us hobby breeders shouldn't either. Being able to look up the parentage of a rose is extremely helpful in deciding what crosses to do.

Philip - that is a lovely rose and the colour is great. Just goes to show that even without planning your crosses, you can get some great roses!

SV .. I, too, think lineage information is really valuable and I am not breeding roses ...

Since I am now gardening in a more difficult climate, knowing the lineage of a rose really helps me find the roses that I think will do well up here.

I am also totally fascinated by some of the combinations breeders come up in their breeding lines.

Along with my reading homework, my mentor had me making my own lineage trees. At first I hated it, but the more I got into it, the more interesting it became.

Yes, Jack was a great rose writer. He could make things that are really complicated seem easy to understand.

zuzu said:A friend took me out for a birthday lunch and shopping spree. I bought four Austins: an Evelyn and a Jubilee Celebration to replace my ailing Evelyn and Jubilee Celebration, and two that will be new to my garden -- Strawberry Hill and Boscobel. I also bought a couple of Abutilons and a couple of Camellias because I can never have too many of those.