Chewing On It

[sarahconeill]

I've been more than a little frustrated that my species crosses were taking so long to germinate. After finding propagation protocols via the Native Plant Network, I think I'm going to be a little more aggressive with my seed coats. This is a very interesting (to me) link on native plant propagation protocols and of course a few rosa species are included.

https://npn.rngr.net/propagation/protocols

One of the issues is that I don't own a hammermill. (Who does?) And for some reason, the blender for seeds terrifies me. However, I did get my kids a rock tumbler recently so I might run some experiments on a bunch of seeds to see how it works out.

[roseseek]

The rock tumbler with an appropriate grit may well help! I have used soft pad sanding blocks, rubbing them together with seeds between them (irritating and awkward) as well as putting sandpaper in the bottom of a large pan and rubbing the seeds between the sand paper sheet and the soft sanding block with sand paper covering it. You would be surprised how much you can apparently remove when you aggressively grind away in a circular motion. I have used a blender to clean seeds from hips and fibers and it can destroy a number of seeds in the process, as evidenced by the half shells you find in the results. I've often added Comet or Ajax (both with chlorine bleach) to help abrade as well as sterilize the seeds. Of course they were rinsed well to remove the cleanser. I obtained a respectable germination from every batch I've used it on so I'm not aware of any disadvantages of the method.

[John Moe]

Some of you may remember that, some years ago, one of our members used to feed his seeds to his pet doves. Apparently the digestive process did a good job of either softening or removing the seed coating. Then the fun task of collecting them.

[roseseek]

And the nasty task of having to grow the birds. We have them as wild pests. That's is sufficient, thank you.