Monday, January 25, 2016

The Best Seedlings of 2015

The new rose seedlings are starting to sprout like weeds!  Counted 918 on Saturday and germinations increasing daily.  The best early germinator continues to be 'Pearl Sanford', with 26% of the seeds already germinated.

It will be a few weeks before any of the new seedlings show off their first blooms.  During this time of the year, I like to reflect on the best seedlings of last year (2015), looking to use most of these for crosses in 2016.

So here they are, the best of 2015.











Monday, January 18, 2016

2016 Rose Germinations - Part 1

They're sprouting!


Above are seedlings of a mini Hulthemia R82-1 crossed with a larger Hulthemia Q247-3.  This seed parent is having the best early germinations so far.  Q247-3 is one of my best Hulthemias and is shown below.


Next, is a seedling from one of my more anticipated crosses, a seedling of 'Midnight Blue' X 'Blue For You'.  The cotyledons have a purplish coloration, so I am hopeful that this suggests that it's blooms will have a nice more purple to blue coloration.  We should get a better idea about it's bloom color in about 8 weeks - I can't wait!


Sunday, January 10, 2016

What New Roses Await in 2016?

The seedling beds are all planted again and ready to go!

First each group of crosses were planted together and tags were placed to indicate the parentage of each cross. 


Next, a top dressing of perlite was used to cover the newly planted seeds.  This is done to provide a dryer surface layer to help prevent a fungus from growing that is deadly to new seedlings, called "damp off".


This year we planted just under 41,000 seeds.  Some of my most anticipated crosses are listed below.  J76-3 is 'Thrive!', and I206 is 'First Impression'.  G168-2 is 'Thrive!'s seed parent and Q117-3 is a thornless remontant seedling coming from a a seedling of 'Thrive!' known as L56-1 crossed with "Basye's Thornless".  Q220-1 is a seedling of 'Midnight Blue' X "Basye's Thornless".  I am especially hopeful for something interesting coming from the cross of Q220-1 X 'Blue For You'.


We should have the first blooms in about 8 weeks.  I can't wait!