How to Collect and Save Rose Seeds

How to Collect and Save Rose Seeds for Planting

There is something truly intoxicating about a bountiful rose garden.

While it might seem like a costly endeavor to fill your yard with roses, there is actually an easy, and practically free, way to take one bush and turn it into many.

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Read on to learn how to collect and save the seeds you need to grow new ones!

Each season, rose bushes form buds which open into fragrant blooms that are pollinated by butterflies, bees, and wasps.

Once the flowers begin to die back, you will notice green ovaries begin to swell at the base of the blooms.

These fleshy pods, known as rose hips, will slowly ripen to red, orange, or yellow. The seeds are contained within these pods.

In addition, the hips are edible and make a delicious nutrient-rich tea. You can learn all about the health benefits here.

It is worth noting that there are many hybridized cultivars out there, and not all plants create hips or produce viable offspring.

You may not know before you try whether the particular cultivar you have will produce usable seed, but since collecting them is so easy, I say there isn’t much harm in giving it a shot.

One reason that some blooms may not form hips is because flowers are removed before pollination can happen. It is important to leave old blooms to fall off on their own to give the hips a chance to develop.

At the same time, hip formation requires energy, and if too many are allowed to form on each plant, it could become overburdened, possibly resulting in underdeveloped seeds.

Therefore, deadheading some but not all of the blooms can create fewer but