THE CARE OF SEEDLINGS

Articles In This Section:

· ELEMENTS OF HEREDITY AND PLANT-BREEDING

· SPORTING OR MUTATION

· RADIANCE & GOLDEN DAWN & OPHELIA

· MANUAL FERTILIZATION AND CHANCE CROSSING - Part 1

· MANUAL FERTILIZATION AND CHANCE CROSSING - Part 2

· SEEDS AND SEED BEDS

· THE CARE OF SEEDLINGS

The tiny plants are very easily killed by sudden temperature variations, damping-off, or mildew, to which they are nearly all susceptible at this age, even though they are highly disease-resistant in a few weeks. Excessive watering helps to spread mildew and a fungus that rots the young stems. Weekly spraying with Alboleum or a wettable sulphur preparation will save many young plants.

The first two leaves are not serrated. In a week or two the third leaf appears and is a typical rose leaf in miniature. When the plant has four or five leaves it should be moved to open ground and planted a foot from its neighbour, with fifteen to eighteen inches between rows. The namings of the crosses must not be lost or confused in the moving. Seedlings that germinate early will be moved in winter at about the usual planting time. Their removal will leave bigger spaces between seedlings that germinate later. These latter will not then be crowded. They can be planted out in suitable weather at a later date.

The earliest of the seedlings will bloom in November, and lateral shoots, and even thin base shoots, will soon appear. Blooming continues all through the summer and autumn. Any seedlings with promising blooms should be budded on to stocks in February or March. It is seldom possible to get good budding-wood from them earlier. These budded plants can be placed in the rose beds in July for further observation over the next few years. They will give much better growth and blooms than the original seedlings on their own roots.

Many seedlings do not give good flowers until their second or third year. Admittedly the vast majority are never of any consequence, but hasty discarding is inadvisable.

By the time the last budding of new seedlings is done, the new season's hips will be ripening, and the new season's sowing preparations can be commenced. Raising roses from seed needs patience, enthusiasm, and good fortune, but there is always the spur to keep on striving, even if one does no more than plant, in a simple way, each year only a few self-pollinated seeds. Many quite good roses will be raised. Some years there will be none worth while, some years several of interest, and some years, possibly, a rose of real distinction to be hailed by all rose-lovers the world over. Each great rose comes from just one seed. Who knows which seeds will produce the roses of tomorrow-better roses than we have today?

One American hybridist raises fifty thousand rose seedlings each year. He has produced several All-America Rose Selection winners, and when he gains this award his firm buds a quarter of a million plants of that variety for sale in its first year. It is quite a gamble, for, though the stakes are high, the standard of roses is improving rapidly and the competition is very keen. He discards many thousands of seedlings that would have been regarded as superb creations only a very few years ago.

The All-America Rose Selection scoring system gives fifty-five per cent of the points to qualities of the plant and only forty-five per cent of the flower. Consequently, some of the varieties that score well are not quite show flowers, but all of them give pleasing blooms on husky plants-good roses for garden and home uses. Several Floribunda roses have won this coveted award. They give people, in and around their homes, plants, flowers, and colour effects that were not possible with older roses.