I replied to your email. :) Basically yes, get the seeds out and cleaned, then you have the choice of winter-sowing, germinating in the refrigerator, or germinating in a cold frame. To use the refrigerator, rinse the seeds with peroxide (the medical supply kind) to kill mold spores. Optionally, you can try to score the seeds with a knife to encourage germination, but that's challenging to do without hurting yourself or damaging the seeds. Then put them in a damp paper towel in a ziplock bag in the fridge. Labeling and dating them is a good habit.

Once they are in the fridge, ignore them for three months. If they get moldy, rinse in peroxide again and put them in a new paper towel and bag. Eventually the seeds will split in half and a tap root will come out. Plant this gently in a peat starter or sterile dirt (to sterilize it, soak with boiling water then allow to dry out before using). If the tap root is caught in the paper towel, don't try to pull it loose because the root is fragile, instead tear off that bit of paper towel and plant it.

thank you.... so winter sowing is what? Just put them in the dirt and see if they grow? I live in California so I could maybe do this.

No if you live in california it won't work unless you live in the far north of the state where you actually get snow in winter. Rose seeds need to be cold for at least 3 months.

Okay I will leave them in the frig for 3 months, and grow them then, thank you, also I was wondering if they would start with a Aero Garden, those indoor water gardens for your kitchen? I'm curious how mother nature intended the rose seeds to generate on their own? Just fall off the bush and re-start themselves?

You have to wait until they sprout to plant them, even if it takes longer than 3 months. I tried planting unsprouted ones and they just will not sprout unless they are quite cold.

I don't know about aero gardens, but roses don't like to be overwatered so you couldn't grow one in water. Possibly you could grow one with just perlite and water, maybe it would also need liquid fertilizer, I dunno.

In nature the seeds usually sprout two winters after they are produced by the plant. (This is not true of roses that naturally live further south, like rugosas, I'm only talking about modern hybrids.) I don't know why they take two winters, you'd think any perennial plant would want its seeds to sprout during the first available spring. Maybe the extra time gives the seeds a chance to get better buried into the ground so they aren't right on the surface when they sprout. Rose hips are edible, I think squirrels like them, so the squirrels might help transport the seeds further from the parent plant.

Thank you sunaandshadow, very intersting ~