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Post by chrysanthemum on Apr 15, 2021 20:48:28 GMT -6
Boiledpeanut, thanks for the offer of Tong Ho, but I think I’m going to be about maxed out for planting this season. Let me know how it goes when you try it, though.
On a Roselle note, I thought this group might appreciate knowing that Hibiscus calyces came to the rescue this week in our household. My youngest was turning five, and I had planned a rhubarb crisp for his birthday. I didn’t have frozen rhubarb on hand, but I had to go to the store for other things, so I figured I’d pick some up. No frozen rhubarb. I needed to come up with Plan B on the spot. Strawberries are in season in Texas right now, so that was an easy choice, but I really wanted something with a nice tang, and plain strawberries just don’t have that. I had found whole dried hibiscus calyces available in a corner of the produce department with the dried chiles, so I brewed up a pot of hibiscus tea and used the calyces as an accent with the strawberry filling. It worked really well (though my oldest found them reminiscent of tentacles), and the birthday boy was just fine with the change of plans.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 3, 2021 14:03:40 GMT -6
I’m trying Roselle for the first time this year, and my poor plants aren’t having the easiest time of it. We used to have a rain tank in the backyard in a corner of the house, but it didn’t collect runoff from the roof well enough in that spot. Last summer we moved it to become an overflow tank for another that is fed from a gutter. (All my rain tanks are overflowing right now as I type!). I didn’t like the vast amount of exposed concrete foundation and bare mulch in that corner of the house, so this spring my husband and I built a small cinderblock raised bed there. I figured it wouldn’t be the best for a summer garden because the corner faces south and west, so it will get a lot of reflected heat, but I’m always game for trying something, and I thought that maybe it would be a good spot for Roselle. I finally got five seeds to sprout (I had some trouble with my first couple tries until I soaked them on top of the microwave) and got small transplants ready. I put them in the raised bed, and they really seemed to like it. The problem is that they are centered directly under the drip line from the corner roof, and their leaves keep getting torn off since we’ve had so many storms. My main garden loves the moisture, and I think the Roselle does, too, but they would have done better being in front of or behind my ollas instead of directly beside them. The one in the corner of the bed just gets ripped to shreds by water runoff. This picture is from a couple weeks ago, and two of the plants have grown bigger and bushier. Who knows what they’ll look like after the storms today? It’s thundering now, so I’m inside. I plan to fill the holes of the cinderblock with herbs mostly. There’s some mint and oregano and za’atar in there now. The corn was really just a total experiment. I had some old seeds and was expecting poor germination when I soaked them for my main garden. To my surprise all but one germinated, so I stuck my extras in the holes to see what would happen. They haven’t grown like the ones in the garden, and they’ve had some pretty severe leaf damage from water as well, but some are holding their own, so it will be interesting to see what happens this summer.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 4, 2021 16:24:27 GMT -6
You must be right about their being tough little things. Otherwise, I don’t think mine would even be alive. I got some updated pictures from today. More leaves got torn off during the rain yesterday, but the largest plant is branching now, so it withstood the onslaught better. It’s about a foot and a half now with four branches. The poor one in the corner is only about six inches but still has its growing tip at least. The poor thing has had to start its leaves over who knows how many times now. The whole bed is an experiment, so it will be an interesting summer. I do have hopes for pretty, bushy Roselle plants outside my dining room window though.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 17, 2021 10:39:19 GMT -6
Roselle is a tough little plant, it will make it anywhere that cotton can be grown. I think that tall one will surprise you by how fast it bushes out. By Autumn, it ought to be about 3' feet across.
I had quite a few of them sown this Spring, but my wife's little yearling deer loves to eat the leaves, so she'd get into my garden and pull them up by the roots. She ate all but six of them when a friend suggested that I string a plastic mesh ribbon-type electric fence and smear it with peanut butter.
I bought some insulators and took his advice ... Poor baby deer ... She hates peanut butter now, but the trick worked and she has not stepped foot in my garden since.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 18, 2021 20:43:40 GMT -6
Now that it’s not raining and having the roof runoff tear the leaves off the plants, the Roselle is definitely putting on new growth. Since it’s such a hot spot, though, that bed is requiring lots of water. We’ll see how good I am about remembering to carry it there each morning. It is the nearest bed to my kitchen, though, so when I have water that I’ve used for washing or for boiling, once it’s cool, I haul it out there and give it to whatever plant is looking like it needs it.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Jun 19, 2021 17:42:34 GMT -6
That reminds me ... During the back-to-back droughts of 2011-2012, I re-routed the drain water from our washing machine and used it to water trees in our yard. At first, I was kind of leery that the soap might hurt them, but all these years later, they seem to still be loving the extra moisture.
I got the idea while living in an RV up in the mountains one summer. The RV site manager there had us dump our gray water separate from the toilet water in our holding tanks to ease the burden from their sewers. The gray water can be recycled for irrigation of sorts by employing a pump and sprinkler system to water the grass. Mine is not that fancy though. Mine just gravity flows out on top of the ground because my house is on a slight hill. There is an area about 20' feet wide at the end of the line that gets year 'round water from our washing machine.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Jun 20, 2021 13:52:56 GMT -6
I’ve toyed with the idea of trying to save our gray water from the washer, but I don’t think it’s going to happen because of the location of our laundry room (the front of our house, with the only real vegetation close by a beautiful Texas Mountain Laurel tree that would not really benefit from additional water.) I’ve thought about just putting a bucket in the sink, but thankfully I haven’t gotten that desperate yet. It probably helps that we produce a good bit of A/C condensation that I can route around the backyard or catch in rain barrels. We also have about 3,000 gallons worth of rain tanks, though they are slowly getting emptied now.
The Roselle in that back bed is doing nicely. Even the one that has had to regrow leaves countless times has new green leaves. Nothing is growing in front of our windows yet, but it’s a nice view to look out and down on the plants. There was a cute tree frog nestled in the top of the bushy Roselle plant this afternoon.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Aug 30, 2021 10:34:49 GMT -6
We had our first Roselle bloom outside the dining room window the other day. It was small but beautiful. Each day since we’ve had one or two more flowers. Am I right in assuming that there isn’t the same urgency about harvesting calyces that there would be about okra pods? Because my bed is so high there, and the plants are so tall, I’ll need to haul out a stepladder to harvest, and I’d rather wait to do it in a big batch rather than a couple at a time.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Aug 31, 2021 19:55:24 GMT -6
No hurry about harvesting the Roselle calyces until they are plump and bright. That takes several days. I wish I had a photo to share, but my old laptop ate them all. However, there are some really good photos that George posted back in 2017, on page 5 of the Roselle Thread.
seedsavingnetwork.proboards.com/thread/176/roselle-jamaica-great-potential-gardeners?page=5
It's easy to tell when the calyces are getting 'long in the tooth' they'll begin losing their luster. Even then, they are still edible, just not quite as flavorful. I haven't made any Roselle tea in so long that it's hard to remember, but I think I used from 3 to 5 calyces per cup of boiling water. (Boil them hard) to extract the most flavor and color. The calyces should be a faded pink color when they are spent. The tea is such a bright, and deep, color of red that we serve it around Christmas time. We also serve it at Thanksgiving and any time red wine would normally be used with a meal. It makes a beautiful presentation that unlike wine, the kids can enjoy as well.
If using the calyces after the seeds mature, be sure to remove the seed pod, as it can be bitter. I use a 1/2" inch copper tube, sharpened on the inside diameter to remove the mature seed pods from mine before making tea. I just insert that from the back side of the calyx and give it a twist. Then, I save those seeds to plant the next year. However, if the pods are still green and have white seeds inside, you can boil them in your tea or in your jelly and they too have a good flavor.
Our little deer ate all but 4 of my Roselle plants this year before I figured out the peanut butter on the electric wire trick, so this will be the first year that Roselle hasn't been in overabundance since the first year George gave me seeds.
You'll enjoy the beauty of the little Roselle calyces once they've turned red. I think they'd make a descent ornamental, even if they we not so good as an edible. They are certainly another 'Happy Making' plant to have around the place.
Out here, frost kills them about mid-October. It will be interesting hear how they fare the Winters at your place. I don't have any experience with them past October, so I don't know how long they'd keep bearing fruit. Keep us posted.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Sept 4, 2021 11:07:25 GMT -6
Thanks for the detailed information and advice. Each day the Roselle plants are putting on new flowers, and the spent ones are developing dark red calyces. It’s been hot around here, and they’ve been wilting a bit in the afternoon. I’m not sure how they’ll fare when cooler temperatures and less sunshine hit in mid September, but I’ve been enjoying them through the dining room window. I’ll plan to keep them going until frost. Two years that I’ve lived here that has occurred at the end of October. Last year there was no frost until a hard freeze at the end of November. This is in a protected area by the house, though, so it’s a big unknown. I will keep you posted. Edited to add: Here’s a photo I took this morning. As the flowers have bloomed and the calyces developed, the tall shoots have been leaning over. It looks like I might not need to worry about using a ladder come harvest time.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Sept 8, 2021 20:42:11 GMT -6
I counted enough Roselle calyces in that photo to make 5 or 6 cups of tea. You'll enjoy that.
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Post by hmoosek on Sept 29, 2021 15:45:11 GMT -6
This sounds superb. I love tea. I’ll have to try and get my fingers on some.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Oct 10, 2021 15:30:39 GMT -6
This sounds superb. I love tea. I’ll have to try and get my fingers on some. Let me know if you want me to send you some seeds. I’d be glad to. If you just want to try the flavor first, our local grocery store sells dried “Flor de Jamaica” in the corner of the produce department where there are lots of dried Mexican peppers. I wonder if yours might have something similar. It’s much more economical than bags of fancy Hibiscus Tea.
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Post by hmoosek on Oct 10, 2021 17:56:41 GMT -6
This sounds superb. I love tea. I’ll have to try and get my fingers on some. Let me know if you want me to send you some seeds. I’d be glad to. If you just want to try the flavor first, our local grocery store sells dried “Flor de Jamaica” in the corner of the produce department where there are lots of dried Mexican peppers. I wonder if yours might have something similar. It’s much more economical than bags of fancy Hibiscus Tea. Thanks! I may take you up on that. I’m also going to check the store. I’ll let you know what I come across.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Oct 30, 2021 20:14:07 GMT -6
I harvested a bunch of calyces yesterday and started processing them today. I didn’t get through my colander, but I have a bunch of seeds from pods that were already dry. Let me know hmoosek if you’d like me to send you any.
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