Growing Roses From Seed
A remarkably rewarding exercise; to grow roses from seed still amazes me even now, how something so small has all the information it needs to grow into a fully mature plant. Growing roses from seed successfully requires that we have to provide some extra ingredients and the right environment and the seed does the rest, wonderful stuff.
I will try to give you the easiest and best ways I know about growing roses from seed. A good starting point is that we’re trying to copy nature, there are so many different recommendations for improving the germination rate but I prefer to keep things as simple as possible, that way you can easily, ‘back track’, what you’ve done, analyse and improve next time.
The Seed
You can buy the seed in packets or remove the rose hips, the fruit of the rose, from already growing roses when they’re fully ripe. If these rosehips are wrinkled they’re drying out and not ideal. If you’re using seed from a packet, follow their instructions and because of that we’re going to continue with how to grow them from rosehips collected from a rose, as there are no instructions on the back of them! If you’re harvesting from your own roses bear in mind that the rosehips develop from the blooms so pruning is not required.
Stratification
This is the where you need to trick the seeds into sprouting so firstly remove the seeds from the rosehips, be warned they itch like mad so treat than the same as chopping chillies. Remove as much of the flesh as possible exposing the small creamy white seeds, these aren’t strictly seeds as the actual seeds are inside but we can use them all the same.
Once clean, wrap them lightly in some damp paper towel, place in a sealed plastic bag, mark them for identification and place in your fridge for around five weeks, keep checking for tips of roots emerging. When they do, transfer to small shallow pots of soil.
Sowing
When growing roses from seed use any container you like as long as it can retain heat and moisture, so clay pots aren’t good at this stage. They need good drainage so use specific potting soil if necessary making sure that whatever you use needs to be sterile so pure plenty of boiling water over it. Place the seeds in the soil about a quarter of an inch deep and about an inch apart, water and keep at room temperature. This is a tricky operation, the little roots are very fragile so you may have to resort to using tweezers of some kind, if you find they’re sticking to the paper towel just apply water until it comes off easily.
Nurturing
This is an accuracy and a numbers game. Don’t just throw a load of seeds together and hope they’ll do ok, be strict and give each one the same attention. It’s inevitable that you will loose many, especially if you’re a beginner but don’t worry that’s what nature’s all about. The ones that do develop are the best of the bunch and will generally thrive, from this point on it’s a matter of checking their progress until they’re big enough to be moved to their permanent home.
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