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rainbowgardener
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roselle questions

This is my first year growing roselle (thank you applestar :) ). I harvested one batch of flower calyxes so far. The seed pods inside them were green, with little white seeds inside. I'm thinking that means they are immature, right? What will the seed pods and seeds look like when they are ripe enough to collect?



It is a hibiscus, so tropical perennial. Mine is growing in the ground. Can I dig it up and bring it in for the winter? Will it be a huge pain to dig out? Will it likely survive that process? How is it likely to do indoors for the winter in pretty low light conditions? I do try to give some of the houseplants supplemental lighting, but I don't have a great set up and there are lots of houseplants (more every year, somehow.... :shock: )

It is being very slow to open the flowers and set the seeds and we are now in a race with the season. I'm thinking it might end up being in the same dilemma with my moonflower vine... Do I leave it out long enough to finish ripening up the seeds, which is likely to be too late for it to survive the transplanting or do I dig it up early enough while it is still in good shape and sacrifice most of the seeds...

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applestar
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(Took care of it for ya :wink:)

I'm so glad Roselle has been a success for you, especially since I wasnt able to get to it. What you are describing is similar to my experience last year -- it was only getting into September that the plants started to bloom in massive amounts. So I think either starting them earlier will help, or else the blooming is triggered by the shorter days. According to Lorax who posted many helpful information, the plant grows like wild in Ecuador near the equator where daylight remains 12 hrs.

I sustained my biggest "shrub" by covering it with garden fleece and eventually with thin (like garment cover) plastic beyond first frosts until a hard frost killed it. Wasn't willing to sacrifice it to dig it up. So I brought in 3 smaller plants. But mine didn't ripen over the winter but held onto the hard green pods all winter, then when I planted them out in spring, finally split open.

HOWEVER, in retrospect, when I grew cotton, which makes similar green pods that eventually split open, I remember harvesting green split pods and drying them indoors, and some of them did split and fluff eventually after drying, while others only partially split or failed to split altogether. With cotton, if the cotton fibers in the pod don't fluff out, the fiber harvest is useless, but for harvesting seeds, that may not be an issue, and it may just be a matter of trial to find viable seeds.

Note though, that the immature spongy inside must be very nutritious because the pods tended to mold easily, so it's not like drying nearly mature green bean pods-- more like broadbeans/limas or maybe runner beans -- and you may lose the mature seeds to mold if you're not careful. I would try different methods like split them open and dry, extract the seeds and dry, etc. and if possible make note of apparent level of pod maturity.

Roselle seemed to be pretty shade tolerant in the cold winter indoors, but the one in the East window without any supplemental light at all and not too far from the back door so may have been subject to drafts died after the winter sun got so feeble that it was getting pretty much no sun at all (this is where my rubber plant, Christmas cactus, aloe, and very light starved avocado lived, along with a fuchsia). One of the plants in a warm dry upstairs bedroom with plenty of supplemental light got infested by scale insects before I realized it. So, only the thirs plant made it all the way to spring. They bloomed with supplemental light but would not set seeds even with hand pollinating, but I didn't have very healthy specimens, so I would like to try this again before reaching a conclusion.

Hope that helps some. It would be really great if it's possible to save seeds from year to year, so I'm looking forward to hearing your results. 8)

imafan26
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I wait to harvest the roselle pods when the calyxes are dry but before the pods crack. If the pods crack some of the seeds fall out.

I don't know if I planted them too late this year because of the rain, but the roselle only put out a few flowers and died. A second set I planted is still growing, but has not bloomed. I don't know if it ever will. I have not seen it bloom so late in the year. It blooms about the same time as the false roselle and that is finished blooming for the year. The difference between the two is that the false roselle does not necessarily die off. I have never gotten the roselle to live longer than a season. I have three left so I am hoping they will live long enough to bloom.

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applestar
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Never got to the point where pods were dry here imafan. Any left of the "shrub" softened and got mushy after the hard frost, though those weren't the first pods to form.

I guess next time, I won't rush to harvest the pods and see if they will get to the point of drying? Or are these like okra and if early pods are allowed to mature, they'll stop blooming/producing? May need to grow extra plants just for trying to grow to mature seeds.

imafan26
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I have grown false roselle for a long time, but only a couple of years growing H. sabdariffa since the plant is not easy to find here.

H. acetosella (false roselle ) is a short lived perennial. It can live more than a season but the branches are brittle and the wind usually snaps them and they rot. But they set seed everywhere. It is sometimes hard to see the bloom even when they do bloom as the false roselle flower can be almost the same color as the leaves. Some of them are pinker so you can seed them better.

The H. sabdariffa has never lived more than one season yet. The last one just dried up, the wind did not snap it. The two varieties bloom around the same timee and they are seasonal bloomers.

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applestar
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I looked to remind myself which kind of seeds I originally bought -- it's the H. Sabdariffa -- and the seed source had a info sheet:
https://www.southernexposure.com/growing ... ulture.pdf

imafan26
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Good article. Pretty much confirms that the plant is seasonal.

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applestar
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Bumping this because I started some Roselle seeds for this year. :wink:

(This time, I bought the seeds from Kitazawa Seeds -- listed as Roselle - Asian Sour Leaf)

imafan26
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Roselle will also grow from cuttings, but I have not gotten the cuttings to live much longer than the original plant.

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applestar
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Thanks, @imafan! That's good to know, because that means I might not have to start as many seeds, and could propagate from cuttings later. 8)

I'm adding this link here just so it's handy, even though it's showing up in the related threads list at the bottom of the page: Subject: Roselle

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applestar
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The seed envelope listed the specific species. I found this reference when I searched:
Roselle, Hibiscus sabdariffa Linn., RED SORREL: Philippine Medicinal Herbs / Philippine Alternative Medicine
https://www.stuartxchange.org/Roselle.html


• The dried calyces yield among others: cellulose, insoluble and soluble ash, tartaric acid, malic acid.
• Calyces are high in calcium, niacin, riboflavin, and iron.
• Food value per 100 g of fresh edible portion: Moisture 9.2 g, protein 1.145g. fat 2.61g, fiber 12 g, ash 6.9 g, calcium 1,263 mg, phosphorus 273.2 mg, iron 8.98 mg, carotene 0.029 mg, thiamine 0.117 mg, riboflavin 0.277 mg, niacin 3.765 mg, ascorbic acid 6.7 mg.
• The flowers yield a coloring matter that contain gossypetin, quercetin, hibiscetin and free protocatechuic acid.
• Bitter seeds contain 20% oil with 26% albuminoids.
• Leaves yield oxalic acid.

imafan26
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The flowers only las a few hours but they can be candied. Most people think they are eating the flowers because they are sold in bags that translates to roselle flowers but it is actually the calyx that is used not the flower. To answer your earlier question. Roselle blooms profusely and I have left the pods on and it does not seem to affect pod production, just age.
Calyxes are ready to harvest 10 days after flowering. If you wait too long the calyx becomes very fibrous and inedible. It should easily snap off the bush as this stage. If you have to fight with it, then it is too old.
Seeds are popped out of the calyx with a chopstick. The calyx can be used fresh or dried. If you are going to make hibiscus tea, you can boil a cup of calyx with a cup of water and spices if you like until the calyxes are soft. Strain the liquor out and dilute it to make the tea and add sugar or honey to sweeten. It is not usually a sweet tea. The pulp can be saved after boiling to make roselle jelly. It takes about 5 quarts of calyxes to make the jelly. Calyxes can be frozen or dried.

https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-cold-br ... chn-192433
https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/ag ... iscus_tea/
https://www.growingguides.com/SeedGuides ... ecipes.htm

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applestar
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Thanks for all the links, @imafan! I'm so looking forward to these growing up this summer :-()
image.jpeg

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applestar
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Update :D
image.jpeg
...I'm keeping them in the Garag V8 where it's been mostly in the 50's to 60's. Last time, I coddled them and kept them in the Winter Paradise (75-85°F) and they grew way too fast. This time, the garage temp got down to upper 40's once, but I moved them onto a heatmat with some young peppers and tomato seedlings, and they seem to have come through OK.

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applestar
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...and here we are halfway into September with maybe another month left in the growing season, and they are HUGE... But still not even one flower bud. :?
349A0CD7-D885-4C60-A641-E46C1CBFE429.JPG
-- these are not the same as the ones I grew last time since I bought the seeds from Kitazawa Seeds this time and the ones I grew before were from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Maybe these are adapted to more tropical growing season. :|

I might have to see if SESE still offers theirs and try again.

* I may end up harvesting just the leaves from these at the last minute
* I might try digging one or two up, pruning them down, and see if I can overwinter them indoors.... I wonder if they might be treated like peppers?

jacopoly
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Hi Applestar,

Please, tell me more regards your sabdariffa, gave you some flowers? Do you have more photos to share?

I'm exactly in the same point than yours was, but here the fall is coming, it's still in vegetative growing and I wondering if it will flowering

Thank you.

imafan26
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That is the tall roselle with the large long pod. It looks like the green variety. There is a Jamaican red that has red stems and the leaves have a slight red margin or are actually green on top and red on the bottom. There a a few varieties of roselle. There are three named ones but there could be more just local ones that are grown but have no names. I have that one and the Thai roselle with is a smaller plant that rarely gets bigger than 4 ft tall and has short more ovoid pods. If you are in a pinch for seeds if you go to the Mexican markets and buy the dried roselle calyxes sometimes there are a few stray seeds in there. That is how one of my friends got a different plant. His friend runs a Mexican restaurant and she orders the dried roselle in bulk from somewhere since it is not easily found here and she planted the seeds she found in the bag.

There isn't much written about roselle. Apparently it has been grown a long time and has uses as a fiber plant as well as for jams and Jamaica (hibiscus tea) but it is not widely farmed commercially and few scholarly articles have been written about it.
https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/ORC00000105/PDF

Baker has the Thai short pod variety for sale.
https://www.rareseeds.com/thai-red-roselle/

According to the pdf the pods are ready when they turn yellow. I haven't actually seen the pods turn yellow. I see them when they are still relatively fresh 10 days after the bloom when we harvest the calyxes. Since I don't have to worry about winter, I wait to harvest my seeds till the pods are brown, dry, and about to crack. If I get to them after they crack, the seeds will have already fallen to the ground. I never really noticed them in a yellow stage.



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