Oooh, those are so pretty! I am new to trying to get seed raised roses myself. I have the first little sprout sitting in my windowsill.

Congrats on the babies. :)

Elaine

I sure love your #9 one. Let us see it when it matures as well. It will be fun to see the progress.

They are all pretty but I love your #9 rose. You can call it " Love Potion Number 9"

awwwww what sweet sweet babies! Loved looking at them! And yes, I must agree with you and everyone else...#9 is gorgeous! Mark's name for it is too funny. If I EVER get a garden shed/greenhouse I'd love to try something like this. It would definitely make winter a little bit more bearable. Thanks for the posting. It made me smile.

April

I agree with April, they are the sweetest little babies. How exciting it must have been for you to watch them sprout and grow and put on those sweet faces. I too would love to do something like that if I had a spot to do it. Can't wait to see the new pictures of them this summer when they are little "toddlers". Thanks for sharing, Judy

Aren't seeds fun? (Mine are in the fridge right now. I'll be planting them either today or tomorrow.) You have some very beautiful babies. While we're choosing favorites, I have to pick #3 and #6. What beautiful form on such small plants.

Connie

Celeste,

We must be kindred spirits. I did the same thing last winter...except that I did mine in my unheated sunroom. I used rubbermaid tubs. I have yet to see the first bloom on any of my babies; I may have all once bloomers..which is fine with me. This year I expanded my operation. Last year I tried hips from about 10 plants; this year hips from about 30 different roses. My seeds have been sprouting well so far.

Robert

Celeste, you have a beautiful collection of new roses! The diversity and the prettiness of each and every one is awesome. Care to give us a run down on your methods used to so successfully germinate all your seeds? Whatever you did, you did it right!

Anne

Celeste, you have a nice setup there and your babies are beautiful. Good for you. You should join the RHA(Rose Hybridizers Association) $10.00 a year and you can get a couple of little booklets for beginers and advanced hybridizers very cheap. There is also a quarterly newletter with excellent articiles which always help me and the best of all is the forum where you can get you questions answered by very nice and knowledgeable hybridizers. I do about 3,000 seedlings a year now and that is enough for me. What you said is so true, there is almost nothing like watching the babies bloom every Winter. Good luck.

Patrick

Here is a link that might be useful: RHA(Rose hybridizers Association)

MY GOSH CELESTIAL ROSE! If this is your first year experience then I wonder what I can expect to see the second year. ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS! I have done some seed sowing with OP's but my results were nothing like yours. At first I thought beginner's luck, but then I thought of the beautiful pictures you have showed us of your roses and I said, she just has "IT!"
Agree with Patrick, you should join the RHA. They have a forum on their web site and it is fabulous for those who are hybridizing (forum is free). You will learn a lot. Just think what you can do to create cold hardy beautiful roses for the upper North East. A whole new career is just waiting for you!

Seriously, wonderful babies. Please go over to the rose hybridizers forum; you will learn a lot, enjoy it, and it will just be another rose addiction, ho hum!
JimEastCoast

Incredible! They are all beautiful. Did you notice the scent of any of them? How are you over winter the pots? Did you bury the them? Love all your pictures from other posts too.

Hi Celeste
It is good to hear from you again. Thank you for hsaring those amazing pictures. I too would like to hear how you went about your process. It sounds very interesting and of course your end result seems to be very fruitful. I wouldnt mind trying it next year and it may help me with the winter blues!!! I have hot peppers growing in my window ledge right now. They are ready to be cut as we speak. Only thing keeping me sane during the cold season.

Carolina

Celeste, Nice set up you had. It was compact yet held a lot of plants. You got so many to sprout! Did you plant your seeds directly in the pots or sprout them first? Are those just regular flourescent lights? I hope you will provide more details.

Yes they are adorable! And each one is so different. I didn't get any sprouted last year, but I did the year before, and I was really struck with how sweet they are. I love the babies and the young plants. I still have three plants from that winter and it's been fun watching them grow. The whole process is very enjoyable to me.

The blooms on your babies are absolutely beautiful! Just incredible. I love the love the water lily looking one, I LOVE the big white single, love the unusual petals on the yellow, I don't normally care for striped roses but that mini is one of the prettiest I've ever seen. Oh and #9, wow, that's a winner, how pretty!

I hope they make it through the winter ok too, and that you will post pictures of them in the spring. Are they under the snow now?

Thanks for a very enjoyable post. I need also to take the opportunity to tell you how much I've enjoyed the other pictures of your roses in the past, too. Most of the time with dial up it takes so darn long to dowload a bunch of pics, I don't always reply, but I always enjoy them. Thanks. Donna

Celeste, that is amazing. You must be so proud. #9 looks remarkably like Austin's Mary Magdeline, one of Austin's best.
Nancy

I just love number 1. Great color and shape. This looks like it would be fun and rewarding.

Celeste-------Absolutely amazing-----I'm speechless--
You must be so proud of all your babies.

Thanks for sharing.

Florence

Very, very cool Celeste. I love numbers 1 and 9. Also it's so neat you got a stripey in there. I may try picking some hips and planting some in pot. Have you thought of any names yet?

Eric

THANK YOU ALL for your wonderful responses to my post! I always enjoy sharing my experiences and photos with you all and getting your feedback. It sures helps with the winter blues to chat about roses and you are all treasured friends.

For those who wanted to know how I went about the seed-starting operation, I kept it pretty simple, and anyone can do it. After collecting the ripe hips in the fall I immediately dug the seeds out of the hips, making sure to get all the pulp off the seeds and clean them well. I soaked them for a day or two in water with a little bit of hydrogen peroxide in it then put them between moist paper towels which I then placed in plastic ziploc bags. They stayed in the refrigerator for 3 months. I did not have any sprout during that time so I simply sowed them in peat pots using packaged sterilized seed starting mix. As for the flourescent lights I used regular shoplights suspended about 3 inches from the pots. I kept the lights on for about 16 hours per day/ off for 8 hrs. I had some germinations in as soon as 1 week after sowing which surprised me, but most seeds took about 2-4 weeks to germinate. As the seedlings grew I just kept adjusting the height of the lights, but made sure they were only inches away from the seedlings. I wasn't sure how well the seedlings would do just using regular flourescent lights but they didn't seem to mind that I didn't splurge on the more expensive grow-lights. Because the set-up was in my basement, the temperature was fairly cool but not cold. So that's basically it, nothing fancy or too scientific, just a lot of hovering over the pots and hoping and wishing.

Thank you Patrick & Jim for the suggestion and encouragement to join the RHA. I did pop over there as a lurker during my seed-growing upon occasion but haven't in a while since I no longer have my setup going. Someday I hope to get back into it because I truly enjoyed it. For now, my mom who has Alzheimer's is living with us so that I can care for her and my grown daughter moved back in, and I lost all available space. It's a hobby I know I will get back into when space allows.

Once again, many thanks for all of your words of encouragement.

Celeste

P.S......
I didn't mean to leave anyone out....I appreciate ALL of your comments & questions.
I re-read the comments and forgot to respond to a couple of inquiries.
Eric, I do have some thoughts about names but haven't "officially" named them. One things for sure.... that two of them will be named for my Mom and Dad. The first of mine to bloom I have called "Mamie's Rose" for my mother because it bloomed on the day she went into the nursing home and it cheered me up because I had been crying so much that day. Now that she lives here with us I think it will give her great pleasure to have her own special rose. And my Dad, his is called "Poppa's Rose".
My Dad is where I got my love of gardening from so hopefully the rose I picked to bear his name will come out special. (I have tentatively picked the roses for them
but am waiting to see if they survive the winter and whether or not their roses are worthy of their names.)

BTW, markiz37.....I LOVE the name you came up with for seedling #9...its perfect. If you don't mind, I think that name might just stick.

ebster....as I recall, seedling #3 was the one which had
the best fragrance. I didn't detect much from the others but I'm hoping that comes with maturity. #3 had a very unusual fragrance, more like a fine perfume than the traditional "rose" scent.

Donna...yes, the seedlings are quite buried. EVERYTHING is buried here under the snow and we're getting another snowstorm Wednesday. Hope the poor little things aren't
claustrophobic! LOL

Robert...I think I also ended up with a few once-bloomers which is fine with me also. I didn't take any hips from my old roses, just my modern ones but with all the old roses around I am sure to end up with a cross. I would love some day to experiment with the hips of my gallicas, albas, and mosses in particular, as well as our collection of found scotch roses. I have a LOT of rugosa seedlings and not one of them bloomed their lst year either. I guess if the seedlings don't survive my brutal winter this year they aren't meant to live here....but I'll miss them.

Thanks, all...

Celeste

Celeste, God Bless You! I loved your rose babies!!

I hope to do the same with mine one day.

It seems to me that you are a caretaker! You have your mom and your grown daughter back with you, and no complaining. Just love! I think you should name one of the roses "Just Love" Because that is what you have!

I wish you joy, love, happiness, and a place to make more babies!

Suzi

Sign me up for a cutting of 2, 4, and 9! Wow!! You did good!!!

Suzi

Celeste, how exciting to see the new seedlings in bloom! I especially like # 8.

Looks like a fun winter project, a great way to help chase away the winter blues.

Suzi and Krista......
Thank you for your kind comments. Krista, you must have gotten that huge storm we had yesterday....got 18" more here. Its been a really snowy winter. I can barely see the tops of most of the roses!
Suzi....I really like your suggestion for one of the roses' names! I will keep it in mind; thanks!

Celeste

Celest you have done an amazing job raising so many seedlings. wow, I hope you have great success with overwintering them all. Each one is beautiful in its own way, I can't pick a favorite. Truly, I love them all.

valerie

# 9 is lovely, but I must admit that I'm partial to #1.
The petals have a wonderful "curve and point" that you see in Medieval depictions of roses. Love it!
avalon

Thank you for this post!, I'm using my refrigerator to cold stratify some rose seedlings, my first one has sprouted already!, I too collected mostly rugosa seeds, although I collected some hips from a Rio Samba rose that was open pollinated. I soaked the seeds in water with a small amount of chlorox, washed and rinsed them really well, filled foam egg cartons with vermiculite, watered, then planted. I cut the egg cartons in half placed in gallon sized ziplock baggies and placed them in my fridge. One has sprouted so far. I look forward to seeing blooms. I love number 8 the best.