When Knock Out® (cv. RADrazz) was first introduced as an AARS winner in 2000, we immediately grabbed it as a parent because of its fantastic black spot resistance. As is the case with Murphy's Law of hybridizing, the variety soon revealed itself to be completely female sterile, but the pollen was viable.

One of the many females we used that first year was an unnamed pink blend seedling out of City of San Francisco crossed with Baby Love® . Despite its bland pink color, it carried the genes for red and/or yellow coloration from its parents. It also had great resistance to powdery mildew plus the potential genes for strong black spot resistance through a completely different bloodline (via Baby Love®). So the goal was to achieve either a red or yellow seedling with resistance to powdery mildew plus a double dose of black spot resistance from different sources.

It's 'Dad' is plagued with powdery mildew on the West Coast....and it passes that susceptibility freely to its offspring. From the 288 seeds achieved in the cross, only 3 survivors showed themselvesto be clean in the greenhouse and the field. Only one was red; another being pink; the third being white. The pink and white werenot up to our level of quality so they were dropped. The red baby soon showed itself to be superior in the qualities of habit, color, floriferousness, etc.

With only 10 plants, we took a chance (knowing the bloodlines) and moved the propagation level up dramatically so we could quickly find out if the variety would own-root successfully. It passed our prop tests with flying colors. So now it was time to see if the level of black spot resistance met our expectations.

Those original 10 plants were distributed to our most trusted nationwide testers, our salesmen. Yes, believe it or not, our salesmen actually do grow roses. The second round of precious-few plants were sent out to a group of private growers and a few public gardens strategically located throughout the U.S.

The first year of evaluations came in very promising. But we knew the second year would give us the true test. So during the wait, we continued to madly propagate to get the numbers up should the variety prove to be worthy of introduction.

First spring reports were great…but a lot of roses look good in the spring. Yet it was the Fall reports that made up our mind to move forward. The red ‘kid' was showing itself to be just as black spot resistant as its ‘Dad'.

Like its parent, Baby Love®, Home Run® seems to never have a huge flush of flowers. There always seems to be some fresh new bright red flowers showing up against the dark green leaves.

We also learned that Home Run® appreciates a light shaping versus a deep pruning. In its first year, the plant will send out some strong shoots as it establishes its mature habit. These may look out of balance at first, but as the plant matures it will fill in to a nice rounded bushy habit.