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| Rose Breeder David Zlesak |
- Shannon
When I was 13, in 1984, I started breeding roses from a newspaper article in the Sunday gardening section of the Milwaukee Journal about Will Radler's rose breeding hobby. It was long before Knock Out came out. I loved gardening then, and the idea of plant breeding and coming up with new kinds of plants seemed wonderfully creative and fun. The mystery of each seedling being different and growing them out to find those that combine the strong points of the different parents with many surprises along the way really drew me in. I wrote to Will, and he connected me with a wonderful older gentleman that bred roses in West Bend, WI, the same town I lived in. Elton Strack became like a grandfather to me. I would visit him almost every week and really cherished our time together and what I learned.
I would save money as a kid throughout the year to buy new roses to use as parents. I would be taken in by the pretty pictures in catalogs and buy the ones that were gorgeous, but needed preventative spray and insulation to get through the winter. Elton focused more on his large-growing hardy species hybrids and some were a bit stingy in bloom. They were hardy though and always came through the winter and bloomed great. Even with spraying and insulating my more tender roses, I would lose many. I felt like if I just do what is written about to protect roses from what they needed protection from, things would be fine. Over time, feeling disappointed losing roses, I started valuing and understanding Elton's passion and use of the hardier roses, and began crossing them with the more tender ones to try to combine the best of both.
I have limited space resources, so I plant out typically a couple thousand seedlings each year and put them very close (8-10" apart). It encourages diseases to build. Many go down from disease, and then it is easier to see which ones show good resistance and then over winter. After a couple years, the well-adapted ones tend to shine compared to their neighbors. Some I hold back and use in more breeding because they don't have enough of all I'm hoping for. Others that seem to potentially fill a niche not well filled at the moment, I send to {Proven Winners ColorChoice} for trialing.
Since I started my love of plant breeding with roses, I still focus most heavily on the rose breeding. Breeding roses, all the wonderful people I've met, and things I've learned kept me inspired to pursue horticulture for my profession. I earned my BS in horticulture and then worked for the Forest Service and Hanson's Garden Village in Rhinelander, WI. Brent Hanson let me use land for my roses which was wonderful and is where I selected the hardy parents in Oso Happy Candy Oh! and Smoothie. I then went back to grad school in the Twin Cities for Plant Breeding and Molecular Genetics and worked on potatoes and then lilies, but my advisors always humored me and let me have some space and opportunity to do some rose projects. I then worked in Extension at the U of MN in Horticulture and worked to establish a northern branch of the Earth-Kind Rose Trialing Program in our region. I'm back at River Falls and work teaching to inspire the next generation of horticulturists. Some of the students help me with Earth-Kind rose plantings and work to understand the reproductive biology of our US native Rosa setigera, which may be a good source for bringing in rose rosette disease resistance to our modern roses.
