It had to be done. Over the years, despite continuous culling, the number of survivors grew too much. Most years, during this time of the year when we are getting ready to pot up the new surviving seedlings, I will select 200-250 of the older outdoor potted seedlings for culling (we try to give most of them away). This year however, instead of selecting roses to cull, I decided to select about 200 of the best roses to keep.
We have a total of 18 watering lines outdoors, each line waters 38-40 pots. This year we cleared 11 of the 18 lines in order to make room for new rose seedlings.
Below are some of the older roses that I selected to keep.
The remaining roses were moved around to open up complete lines so that the new 2014 seedlings can be kept altogether.
The Sproul Rose Farm is looking very differently from what it looked like a couple of years ago at peak bloom (see Peak Bloom at the Sproul Rose Farm).
Shown below is one of the newest seedlings (from 2014) that will be potted up and planted outside in the next few weeks. Culling is one of the hardest things to do when hybridizing roses, especially of the longstanding survivors. Fortunately, most of them will find new homes.
The roses grow, the spider mites invade, the greenhouse has to be sprayed, the weather is way too hot, the maintenance is overwhelming, and all of the rest of life goes on…..
I've missed blogging.
This post will be short, but wanted to share a photo of my best seedling coming from 'Eyes for You', used as a pollen parent. The seed parent was a Hulthemia seedling of mine. This new seedling has strong traits coming from it's pollen parent, including excellent fragrance. It appears to be quite floriferous and clean to powdery mildew. I am looking forward to seeing how it does outside next spring.
