The Real Trick to Grow Roses from Seed

Well, you came here looking to grow roses from seed, let me show you the real thing These seedlings sprouted a couple months ago and now they're ready for transplant I can divide them out like this when they first sprouted They had just a couple of seed leaves like this or cotyledons and then they developed a more familiar foliage of roses I show you the real thing right away because there's a whole lot of fakery going on around there of things that they call Seedlings or cuttings of roses that look like this and really are neither one They're actually just glued together for fake videos So let's have a look at how to do the real process of growing roses from seed Hi, I'm Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm a professional rose grower here on our rose farm This is where I live and work and I grow many thousands of roses a year some from cuttings many from cuttings and some from Seeds like this in this tray here Now the process of getting roses from seed is actually really easy and natural But there is exactly one trick to it. So it isn't turmeric. It isn't any garlic or bananas or magic powder It's just cold roses require a cold treatment to for their seedlings to sprout and if you think about it Roses come from northern temperate climates at least the majority of them And so for them to sprout they need to be sure that their seeds are past the risk of winter So they sit through the winter getting cold and then they sprout after that. So you have to provide that for them Sometimes you may ask I could just put it out into the if I have a cold climate couldn't I just put it out into the garden spread the seeds in the soil or spread them in a tray like this and Put them out and let the cold do it and you absolutely can actually I have another tray Where I did that and this one here you can see I've got a couple of seedlings in here Sadly the birds got to it first and ate a lot of the seeds and messed it up and that's kind of what happens out In the garden as well is that they either get buried too deep gets messed around by the winter get covered in snow get lost Get eaten by animals So the way I actually prefer to do it is to put them into the fridge where they get the temperatures that they need for Stratification or cold treatment step. So for the first specific of this video What is that cold temperature that you need to have them and for how long the answer to that is? Generally about as cold as your fridge in that range of 2 to 4 degrees Celsius or 35 to 39 degrees Fahrenheit And they usually will stay in there for two months or three months Until you start to see some of the seedlings will start to sprout even in the fridge So you need to check on them every once in a while Now you don't just put them in there dry you put them in what I did was in a in a moist potting soil you can also put them in moist vermiculite or perlite, but basically they have to have moisture and cold and Towards the end of that stretch around two months You start checking on it weekly just to see if they sprout and in this case I got lots and lots of sprouts in this one tray now, where do you get the seeds? What do what happens with all of that? Well roses go through a cycle like this They flower first and then behind that flower is a receptacle that starts to swell into the fruit of the rose That's called a hip So from the time of flowering and cross pollination It can take up to two to three months for that hip to ripen and oftentimes They will turn either orange or red when they're fully ripe and ready to use So your cycle generally happens the year before for me to get these I had to collect these seeds In the fall of last year I removed them from the seed pods or from the rose hips and Cleaned them up and then just spread them into these trays covered them lightly Made sure they were moist and went into the fridge for that stratification step and it's as simple as that Let's get transplanting them Let's get you a close look at these here. And as I tease these apart, I think I can anticipate some questions I did a video like this a while back. So Question number one, when should I repot these? The answer is anytime you'd like This is about the stage. I'm doing it here and you can see they've gotten to be about two inches tall And they have some leaves on them You could do it a little bit earlier if you're gentle with little roots Or you could wait until they're big like this and that's a fine time to transplant Second question that people will ask is about the soil that I'm using So I did use a peat and perlite mix potting mix that you can see here and I'm just gently teasing them apart here to get some of the roots off and Disentangled with each other but hopefully still have a good root ball for each little Seedling and that seems to have a good amount. So I'm going to go over here to the pot Dibble a nice hole here and stick that in and stick it in to about the same level of The soil on the stem as it was in the seedling tray So you can see that was a nice and easy transplant that now has its room to grow onwards So again, the soil I used was a peat and perlite mix But if you prefer to be peat free and that's totally your call I would say go ahead as long as it's a good potting mix You should be good to go once again separated that one out with leaving a good amount of root on the base The other question that I've heard from the previous video that I did on this was that stratification steps Sorry, I'm making a mess here But that stratification step of giving it the cold treatment is that absolutely necessary if you're doing it in A warmer climate like let's say you're in a tropical climate. Well, the answer to that is sort of yes the the roses themselves their genetics are kind of built from their Ancestors in northern temperate climates. So The fact that you're growing them in a tropical climate Shouldn't affect that requirement. They still need that to to do their germination Second thing I often hear about that stratification step is well, what if I just left the seeds on the rose or left the Hips on the rose over the course of the winter and the answer to that is no Actually, the the seeds need to be out of the hips before they feel that stratification step or feel that cold and moisture Inside the hips or inside the fruit They seem to have some sort of an inhibitor that keeps them from feeling that and so the timer doesn't start Until they're in cold and wet. I'm gonna keep on separating some of these out to get more pots afterwards And sort of one last question I wanted to tackle here was about Some of the seedlings that you would have seen or some of the seeds that you would have seen sold on eBay that have those Kind of fancy colors to them a lot of people come to this kind of video looking to get germination or stratification Instructions for those seeds and sadly I have to inform them that those seedlings that you're seeing on eBay are basically fake there You're not going to get exactly or nobody can tell you exactly what you're going to get from a seedling as part of the fun of growing roses from seeds So even if you've gone through the cross-pollination step yourself and you've bred a new rose like I showed that you in this other video you don't know exactly what the qualities will be of those seeds and the fact that you're seeing ones on those eBay listings that are like purple or striped or Green or all sorts of fancy or black colors or have dots on them and that kind of thing Those you know are not very credible they don't aren't roses don't generally come in those color ranges And certainly a lot of that is Photoshop. Some of them might be pictures of real roses But even so even if that were the case you wouldn't necessarily Have the same as the mother it remixes the genetics when they come from seedlings It's just like people if you have two parents You are a remix of all of your ancestors genes and no two people are alike so even if you took a Seedling from double delight the offspring will not be double delight All right. Well, I hope that answers some of your questions It looks like I'm dividing them out here. It looks like I'm getting plenty of little seedlings here To put into the garden so I will get some pots and I will have all of these For sale later on this year. Thanks for watching. And if you have any questions drop them in the comments below the video