Simply place the dried pollen of Veterans' Honor on the pistil of an emasculated bloom of Crystalline and it may mature into a seedpod in from 2 to 5 months. If you are curious to see which of the cultivars that you grow will produce seeds simply leave a few spent blooms on a bush in the fall and observe whether they produce hips. There are lists of successful crosses in books such as "The Ultimate Rose Book" by Stirling Macoboy; Harry N. Abrams, Inc., publishers. You can help with learning to produce unique roses by joining the Rose Hybridizer's Association at 21 South Wheaton Road in Horseheads, NY, 14845. I am a member and have written a few articles for the RHA Newsletter.
Rose pollen is very fragile and should be dried inside the house out of direct sunlight. I cut blooms that are just opening, remove the petals gently with my fingers and place them on white paper to dry. Each paper should contain pollen from only one variety of rose. A short peach of the peduncle, left on the bloom, will serve as a handle when making the pollen transfer to the emasculated bloom on the mother bush. I sometimes remove the sepals when I remove the anthers and stamens, and other times I leave them. I do not paint the pollen onto the pistil. I place it there by touching it or letter it fall onto the pistil of the mother bush. Loose pollen on the paper can be blown onto a pistil. I sometimes transfer pollen with the tip of my finger or a very small brush. Pollen can be stored inside the house for 3 days and possibly 5 days if the house if very cool. Pollen can be stored in a tight container in your freezer for months or years. Frozen pollen must be left out of the freezer until it is completely room temperature before the container may be opened. If you open the container before it becomes room temperature the pollen will turn to much and be ruined.
Please keep a record of your crosses and the date on which they are made. I would make a cross of Crystalline with Veterans' Honor with the notation Cr x VH on a master list of the bushes in my garden. I put a streamer of white Teflon tape on the stem of the seedpod to make it easy to find. Remember that the peduncle is very fragile and should not be touched while you are working on the cross.
To emasculate I tear off the petals gently with my fingers from a bloom that is just opening and remove the anthers with small curved scissors. The pollen can be saved if you wish. I test an anther or two to see if any pollen has loosened. If I think there is any chance of self-pollination I discard the cross. Some of us emasculate in the morning and pollinate in the afternoon. This allows the pistils to become sticky and be more receptive to the dried pollen. Remember not to smear the pollen on. That will probably ruin it, as it is very fragile. I will make no more than 3 crosses for most bushes and I generally use blooms from the mature or even twiggy stems. Crosses on top of the bush tend to fall off prematurely. The pollen becomes very scarce as the weather turns into summer so I will quit pollinating by June. Fall pollinating must be done early enough for the seeds to mature on the mother bush for about 3 months before a hard freeze.
Some varieties that I have successfully used as mothers and fathers: Don Juan, Dainty Bess, Lemon Spice, Whiskey Mac, Queen Elizabeth, Granada, Sun Sprite, Garden Party, Rio Samba, Peace, Crystalline, First Prize, Tiffany, Color Magic, New Dawn, Gold Medal, Veterans' Honor, Europeana, The Fairy, Cajun Sunrise and Rosa Bracteata. I have used the pollen of Mr. Lincoln, Pascali, Fragrant Cloud and Kristin. Some roses, such as Uncle Joe, will not produce viable seeds. Others, like Rosa Bracteata, are very difficult or impossible to cross-pollinate.
What do you do after a seedpod matures? I remove the pods and place their stems, including some leaves, in sugar water with a little vinegar or a few drops of bleach and under a bank of my grow lights. I will then, at my leisure and within a week, harvest the seeds. Expect to find from 1 to 40 seeds. I soak them in a Mancozeb solution for a few minutes and transfer them onto a Bounty paper towel. The seeds are rolled up in the towel to resemble a tamale. The tamale is placed in an airtight plastic bag. Mark the bag with the date, the names of the parent plants and how many of the seeds floated and how many sank. The bag is then placed in a refrigerator where it can be kept at 40 degrees F for a little more than 2 months. The seeds should be checked periodically after this time to find out if any plants have sprouted.
I will mass plant my seeds, by variety, in unfertilized potting soil after this process of stratification. I roll the seeds in a little Captan and plant them 1/2 to 3/4 inch deep. Allow the potting soil to be a little fluffy and moist. I wrap the pots of seeds with a vapor barrier to keep in the moisture. I have a dedicated refrigerator for show blooms and planted seeds. It has defrost on demand-only and does not automatically defrost.
I lift the seedlings out of the potting medium with a 16-penny finishing nail that has a very sharp point. They are planted in their own 12-ounce Styrofoam coffee cup where they will bloom in 6 weeks or more. I can observe this unique rose for 2 blooms before repotting. Once thing I must do is to compare the plant with the mother bush. If it looks exactly like the mother bush it may not be unique. Of 3 to 4 hundred unique roses I will keep perhaps 30 or so for further evaluation. If it does not look like a great rose I can't afford to keep it.
You may want to build a greenhouse; tat is if you live in a climate where it probably won't get blown away by a storm. If you don't want a greenhouse, you should have a few banks of grow lights in your house that are controlled by a time clock. You might want to learn how to bud your unique roses to Fortuniana rootstock. You will eventually need space for your own test garden. You will need a camera that will take close up pictures. Take good care of your health because it takes years and years to get a rose patented and marketed. I also advise newcomers to get all of their world traveling done before they become insane from creating unique roses - as they will not have time for things like this afterwards.
I advise you to train your eye to look for sports on your bushes. A sport of a patented rose can be patented. I advise you to save any sports you find and root them through 3 generations to see if the sport holds true. A sport is a spontaneous alteration of the genetic code, usually on just one stem of the bush. New Dawn is an example of a sport, coming from the climbing rose, Dr. W. Van Fleet. New Dawn holds the United States Patent No. 1 for roses.