If you have the soul of a sorcerer's apprentice and you like surprises, don't hesitate to try to create a new variety of rose. The technique requires a little know-how and a lot of patience, but the results can be as good as you expect and even better!
Choosing the "parents
The mother plant is generally chosen to carry the seeds of the new rose variety. It is selected according to its vigor, its resistance to diseases and to bad weather. The other rose or "father" plant will determine the color, fragrance and shape of the future rose.
The hybridization technique
- Materials needed:
- Small scissors;
- paper cone ;
- ramekin ;
- colored wool thread;
- fine paintbrush.
The ideal time to hybridize is in the spring.
The choice of the mother plant will be made on a vigorous and disease resistant subject. The plant must be in flower.
- Choose a well opened rose and remove all the petals to free the heart. Cut the stamens with small scissors to prevent the rose from self-pollinating.
- On the father plant, select a beautiful rose and cut the stamens before complete maturity.
- Place them in a flared ramekin.
- Wait a few days for the pollen to be released on the walls of the ramekin.
- Collect the pollen with a fine brush that you will put in direct contact with the stigmas of the rose prepared beforehand on the mother plant.
- Cover with a paper cone.
Waiting for the result
It only remains to wait a few months for the rose hip to ripen and go to seed. It will then be time to extract them to sow them in small pots well drained in their bottoms and filled with a light substrate composed of two parts of potting soil for one part of river sand.
Place the pots outside but away from strong frosts.
By April, the seedlings should have produced small seedlings that should then be transplanted into individual pots or even in the ground. Sometimes in the first year, the roses created in this way will have one or more flowers. If this is not the case: be patient, you will have to wait until the following year to discover the result!
