By Sam McGredy.
Rose breeding has claimed the attention of
nurserymen here for many years and the houses of
Dickson and McGredy have been responsible for many
of Britain’s leading roses in the past.
As a young man of 24, I am fully aware of the
responsibility placed on my shoulders to carry on
that tradition. Yet to me it is a challenge to
produce even better roses - a challenge I gladly
take up.
When I started breeding roses, I endeavoured for the
first year to carry on where my father left off -
but very quickly decided that I would be better to
start off on a new strain and use my own methods.
Starting off from scratch like this can be an awful
headache. As far as I could determine there were two
courses open to me. The first and easiest was to
establish the hybridising house with varieties such
as Crimson Glory and Mrs. C. Lamplough, which were
recognised good parents. The second was to bring in
completely new varieties and hope for the best. As a
matter of fact, I fell in between the two and
planted some good parents and some complete
outsiders.
I feel that the key to plant breeding lies in three
things - observation, quantity and efficiency.
Observation very soon taught me that many of the so
called good parents are played out - in other words,
it is better to concentrate on the seedlings of
these, e.g., use Ena Harkness and not Crimson Glory.
Now I am using many of my own un-named seedlings and
will probably in a very few years use little else -
always working with the latest and best. There are
of course exceptions to this and I will occasionally
shoot back to an old variety for some particular
characteristic I know it will transmit easily. It
was obvious that a large number of a few crossings
would teach me more than many different crosses, so
I proceeded to raise large families (anything up to
500) and observed them closely. In that way I got a
fair idea of what a parent would do with a given
mate (e.g., Kordes’ Sondermeldung colouring was
dominant when crossed with any of the Pinocchio
series).
Of course, I’m really only on the bottom rung of the
hybridising ladder but I have a nucleus of plant
material now which will I hope produce good roses in
the very near future.
Had I been, content to raise three or four thousand
seedlings a year such knowledge I have already
gained would have taken about ten to fifteen years.
That is where my number two rule - quantity - comes
in. At the moment I am producing on an average forty
to fifty thousand seedlings a year which increases
my chances of getting something good but, more
important at the moment, it gives me a lot more
material to observe and from which to learn. From
the beginning I was plagued by several troubles.
Rotting off of hips was one, mildew another, and
then after all the work, germination was at the
15-20% mark. The answer to all of this lies in my
number three rule - efficiency. It is completely
useless to approach plant breeding in a haphazard
manner. If I see greenfly at all, the house is
fumigated the same day and not left over “until
there is more time”. I never let an old flower shed
its petals, but remove them completely. The soil is
hoed regularly and water is applied by means of a
drip feed system direct to the roots so that
splashing of the foliage and flowers doesn’t occur.
Many other small but very important details receive
daily attention. As a result my germination this
year was on the 75% mark, and I have harvested a
crop of some 12,000 hips from one relatively small
greenhouse.
As yet you have not had the opportunity of seeing my
seedlings and it will still be another two years
before the first rolls off the production line. This
is a Floribunda called “Salute”. Bred from
Masquerade, the red and yellow bicolour flowers are
very showy indeed. Incidentally, it was the only
seedling which passed all my tests out of quite a
large crop in 1953.
Looking quite a way ahead, I have two or three
delightful Ma Perkins seedlings which show real
promise and one really classic pink H.T. from Golden
Masterpiece x Karl Herbst. .
As you read this I will have over 100,000 different
varieties going through their paces. From this mass
of roses will come the new rose for 1961 or 1962.
It is long term work, exacting and sometimes
heartbreaking - but it could never be described as
dull. And just now and again comes a rose that sends
my hopes soaring to the skies. The whole thing is
worth it just for those moments.
