Growing roses from seed

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Growing Roses By Seed

Rose seeds may be purchased, or procured from the heps or fruits of good sorts of roses. When ripe and softening, the heps must be gathered, buried in damp sand (somewhere safe from rats and mice) and left till spring, by which time the pulp will have decayed, and the seed may be easily separated.

After selecting a suitable bud proceed to remove it as indicated by dotted lines on the shoot. The leaf should next be cut off as shown by specimen on the right hand. The third illustration shows the under side of a bud, its eye or base, and the hard wood which has to be removed.

The rose seeds are sown thinly in drills about a foot apart. Another plan is to rub out the seeds as soon as they are gathered and sow them at once. Some of the seeds will germinate the first year, but not all, and probably not the best of them, so the seed rows must not be dug up for at least eighteen months after sowing ; any plants, however, which become big enough for transplant- ing the first year must be carefully lifted out with most of their roots intact and put into nursery rows, where they should be protected during the first winter with some suitable surface mulching.

Transplanting Rose Seedlings

Transplanting should take place in October or early in November, to allow time for a certain amount of root action taking place before winter sets in. The second year all the plants in the seed row may be served the same way, for seeds which have not germinated by this time will be worthless. This batch should be most carefully looked after, as it will probably contain the best of the seedlings. A year or even two may elapse before any flowers of the roses appear, and even then the first flowers must not induce us to condemn the plants, unless the colour is bad, for most of the best varieties come semi-double the first time they flower.Growing plants from seed