Monday, July 4, 2011

'First Impression' Proving To Be Quite Clean

This is a short departure from writing about the new Hulthemias, to write about an older seedling.  With this post, I wanted to highlight the disease resistance that I am seeing in a seedling from 6 years ago that has been named 'First Impression'.  'First Impression' is a dark yellow floribunda, introduced by Nor'East, and now carried by Greenheart Farms.  It has surprisingly good disease resistance - especially in our climate, but I am getting good reports from other areas of the country too.


The photo above was taken with my iPhone during a trip to Greenheart earlier this year.  I took a video of the plant (unfortunately after its peak bloom) to show its disease resistance in our non-sprayed rose garden.  Click here to see the video.  'First Impression' is the second rose in the video and has all of its foliage.  The first rose is heavily defoliated, while the third rose (actually a fairly clean rose too) has several leaves showing blackspot.  'First Impression' doesn't have a single blackspot on it.  For those interested in breeding yellow roses, I would suggest using this one.  There haven't been a lot of hips on 'First Impression' in my experience, but for some reason, most of our roses have produced an abundance of OP hips this year including 'First Impression.  I would mainly use it as a pollen parent, but who knows, maybe you could also get lucky and get good hips on it too!

'First Impression' came from a cross of [('Lynn Anderson' X 'Tournament of Roses') X 'Hot Tamale'] X ('Stainless Steel' X 'Baby Love').  Other than from 'Baby Love', I am not sure where it is getting its good disease resistance.

9 comments:

  1. So what are the other two roses if you do not mind I ask?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Also I can't believe you took that photo on a phone.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Adam, The other 2 roses are also seedlings. The first one is a half-sister seedling to 'First Impression', but the pollen parent for FI was used as the seed parent: ('Stainless Steel' X 'Baby Love') X 'Julia Child'. The third seedling was 'Pearl Sanford' X ['Chipmunk' X ('Sam Trivitt' X 'Baby Love')]. I have been very happy with the photo quality of the iPhone. Looking forward though to the 5G!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Amazing work! Beautiful rose!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I have two First Impression Roses. They have beautiful blossoms, are very floriferous and are very hardy here in Southeast Texas. Most of my other roses are heirloom roses with the exception of 3 David Austin Roses that defoliate and get black spot. I never spray my roses but am thinking about spraying those.
    I planted some of their seeds 6 weeks ago but they have never come up.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Gwen, I am glad to hear that 'First Impression' is doing well for you in Texas. Did you put the rose seeds in the refrigerator for several weeks before planting them? Rose seeds will take very long to germinate if you do not provide them with a winter chilling period.

    ReplyDelete
  7. FIRST IMPRESSION and how-to questions re planting seeds from hips
    Hi Jim, I was excited to find this upon looking for how to treat rose seeds before refrigerating them. I have carefully cleaned off all pulp, then soaked two minutes or so in 100% HCl before noticing they were bubbling slightly. I quickly removed the seeds, thoroughly rinsed and dried them, then placed in sealed baggy and into refrigerator. Is there a better de-germer or should HCl be diluted? I'm still not sure exactly when to pick my hips. Just picked some overripe ones and hope the seeds are okay. I'm always afraid of picking hips too early. I thought I'd see if I can get one seedling to grow out of the hips I already have before hybridizing. I LOVE FIRST IMPRESSION! Not only was it the only plant out of 25 ordered from Nor'east at their closeout, it has survived with that wonderful foliage. I have 4 hips now on the one plant, but they're not ripe. I put baggies over the hips and buds on nights that get below freezing. It works. Please give me any of your ideas! Carol Smith, Ken's wife

    ReplyDelete
  8. PS I mean hydrogen peroxide 3 percent solution, not HCl!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Carol, I'm glad that FI is performing well for you. Great to hear that you aren't using HCl too! Some people use H2O2, but I don't use anything to clean the seeds. I don't even use paper towels any longer. I will only "mist" the bags containing the seeds with a very small amount of water. Although I like to pick hips when they are orange or red, most seeds will be mature after 4 months on the plant and most seeds are viable if there is at least some color on the hips. FI seeds will germinate, but when you feel ready to make crosses, I would suggest using FI as a pollen parent.

      Delete