I am trying to harvest some rose hips

Hello Everyone,

Plese do tell me how things would turn out and your experience and thought on the his matter:

My Bajazzo has been very efficient in producing hips: every single of its blooms yielded a hip. After the flowers it was a magnificent display full of orange hips. So I have been experimenting on harvesting the hips on it.

The first and obvious method is naturally leave the hip on the plant and after the first frost or when the hip is red/orange and perhaps soft or starting to harden then cut the hip off.  

The pics of the Bajazzo hips:
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David. I will be more than happy to post as many as you like.

In the second method for me: The hips were so beautiful I wanted them in the vase amongst my other cut flowers and wanted to have some greenery in the vase. So I cut the hips in green attached to the stems and put them in the vase. To my amusement the hips started to change colours from dark green to orange mixed green and orange then pure dark red or pure dark orange. The hips are still in the vase since the first week of October and yet still plum and healthy. A beautiful décor.

Then I could not help myself and opened one of the hips that has no more green colour on. The seeds seemed very health fat and plum. An opportunity experiment with the seeds: Poured boiling hot water from the kettle and then when cooled  put them in the freezer until the surface of the water gets frozen but underneath is still liquid water, cut the pointing ends with toe nail cutter, toilet cleaner-bleach, washing liquid and so on. ...Gosh… I have got to be patient!!! …Ayy!!...Ayy!!....AAyyyy!!

I need to find a way to crack the seed to help it start germinating sooner like you crack hard shelled nuts/seeds without destroying the inside. Any suggestion everybody?

My third method is an inspiration from the wiki pages: Picked the green hip with the stalk is still on and put it in an envelope and let it dry or whatever it wants to do. I am hoping this method will work for more difficult to harvest hips in the garden. And one of them is Odyssey:

I have been trying to harvest some Odyssey hips to send to David. So far there are 11 hips on the plant. It looks promising that they are getting ripe on the bush itself. So David will get those once the hips are ready to pick off the plant and David will kindly tell me when by looking at the pictures.

Below is pics of Odyssey hips on the bush.

David is it the time now to pick them up or shall I wait a bit more?

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I couldn't get the camera focus on the hips beacuse of the orange colour.
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For some reason some of the hips are falling off the plant. It is annoying but I have to think something: I don't know what makes the hips fall off. I come across an info in the wiki pages that although it is not known if it has been tried or not but another way of harvesting rose seeds using the seeds of the green hips. So I picked up all of the fallen hips with the stems on. I did not cut the stems the hips attached on. I put them in a used paper envelope. Label and let the hip be. After about 3 weeks or so I opened up the envelope to check the state of the hips. I was expecting to see some rot or fungus. But I was surprised to see the green hips have been changing colours to orange/red with no signs of rot or fungus. There is some shrinkage on the surface of the hip but I think this is natural as there is no water to feed the hips. If David want these too I will be more than happy to post them too.

Fallen off hips rescued - hopefully?!?:
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I opened one of the hips which still has green colour shell on. The seeds seemed very raw healthy fat and plum (..like the owner). I soaked the seeds in the water. After 10 days or so the seeds started to develop a dark skin and are beginning to look like ripe and mature seed. I have no idea if these seeds are going to produce rose plant.