Growing and propagating well-known rose varieties is a lot of fun - how much more fun is it to grow your own roses? Growing roses is a fun hobby, but it requires a lot of patience. After all, it will take several years before you become successful. In this article we will explain to you how to start growing roses like this. Give it a try!
How can I grow and propagate roses myself?
To grow your own roses, choose different rose varieties with rose hip formation, plant them in a bed and cross them specifically or through natural pollination. Collect ripe rose hips, remove the seeds and sow them after cold treatment. Grow seedlings, select promising varieties and propagate them vegetatively.
Rose breeding means more than just propagation
Breeding roses is much more than just breeding or propagating already known varieties. When propagating, it is known in advance what will come out in the end - when breeding, it remains exciting until the first flower (and often also until the second) what the result will look like. With a bit of luck, completely new varieties will emerge that you can ultimately give your own name.
First step: obtaining new varieties
In order to start growing roses, you first need parent plants. To do this, choose as many different types of roses as possible, but they must all have one property: they should form rose hips. Now plant these roses in a bed. By the way: Many wild rose species are not suitable for growing roses because they remain pure varieties.
Planting different types of roses and crossing them with each other
Rose blossoms are hermaphrodite and always rely on cross-pollination. Pollination can either be done manually or you can let bees etc. fertilize the flowers and wait and see what happens. The disadvantage of “wild” pollination, however, is that you cannot trace the origin of the rose variety that may result from it - after all, the parent plants are not known. However, even if the father and mother varieties are known, a further attempt does not necessarily produce the same result: In contrast to vegetative propagation, with non-varietal propagation you never know which genetic traits will prevail even in the same parents.
Collecting and sowing seeds from hybrids
After fertilization, rose hips form, which you collect when ripe and free the seeds from the pulp. After several weeks of stratification, you can finally sow the cleaned seeds that have been soaked in warm water overnight in the vegetable compartment of the refrigerator. The cold period is important to break the germination inhibition of the seeds. The small seedlings should be separated very early or raised individually from the start; it is also important to tweeze them. To do this, simply clip off the top new growth with your fingernails so that the young plant is stimulated to grow bushy early on.
Grow seedlings yourself
If the seedlings have between four and six leaves, you can plant them individually in good rose soil. The growth behavior of the small roses is already evident and you can see whether you may even have climbing roses or ground cover plants. However, do not hesitate to sort out sickly and puny seedlings early on: these rarely grow into strong and he althy plants.
Selecting and propagating new rose varieties
Many of the seedlings bloom in their second year, so you can tell whether you were successful or not. If you have actually bred a promising new rose variety, you can reproduce it via vegetative propagation. This means that you propagate the new rose from cuttings and thus obtain clones of the same.
Tip
Don't despair if the roses don't want to germinate: the flowers need at least four to six weeks to germinate, and new plants only grow from about a third of the seeds anyway.
