Steps 4-7

More of Getting Started

4. When the prepared buds are ready, remove an opened bloom from the father plant. (The anthers will be open and shedding powdery pollen.) Carefully snip off the petals; leave the anthers intact. Use this flower like a paintbrush to carefully dab pollen onto all of the prepared mother flowers. Cover again with the paper envelope. If you are successful, the base of the mother flower will swell into a rose hip, the fruit of the rose, within one or two weeks.

5. Leave the rose hips until they turn dark after a frost. Then harvest them and store them in a sealed plastic bag in the refrigerator until spring.

6. In spring -- a month or two before the last frost date -- cut the rose hips open, and plant the seeds in seed-starting mix or potting soil in a plug tray. Set the tray in a 70 to 75 degree F greenhouse or in a southern-exposure window. Keep moist and fertilize regularly with diluted balanced fertilizer.

7. The seedlings should grow big enough to bloom within six weeks. Choose the ones you wish to nurture into full rosebushes (probably less than 5 percent), and send the other scientific attempts to the compost pile. Pot the survivors in individual pots until they can be planted in the garden.

Over time, you'll discover other flaws, such as disease problems, lack of reblooming, or weak plants. From several hundred seeds, you may keep only one plant, depending on your taste, but it's your creation and the world has never seen its exact likeness before.