The rose hip tea. MG, you don't have to clean them from seeds for this purpose :) Tea is usually made from dried hips. Rosa canina hips are classic, but Semiplena or Rugosa hips will work as well. The recipe is for 1 Qt of tea. Take a handful of dried hips and put it in the thermos bottle (the real one, the one that will keep temperature for hours)and fill thermos with boiling water to the top. Close thermos and let it stay for 4-8 hours or overnight. High temp helps extraction of flavors. You will have the most delicious tea, very dark and flavorable. With good thermos it will still be really hot. You can add some suguar if you like your tea sweet. Olga

Hi all, After much corespondence with different people, we now believe this Citrandarin is a tissue-cultured clone of US-852. It took a while to investigate all this. US-852 was apparently developed at the Univ. of Cal - Riverside. Budwood was sent to Florida to a Tissue-culture lab. It was hoped this would be a good rootstock for the Florida citrus industry. For numerous reasons, they decided against it -- one being that its seeds are highly zygotic and produced maybe only 50% true clones. Tissue culture was apparently not cost-effective. So, the tissue-lab unloaded its plants and several retailers bought them up to sell as a hardy citrus novelty. I purchased the plant from Stan McKenzie (McKenzie Farms). Panama John has been growing it. Last year it had 3 fruits. This year around 15. I have not actually tasted a ripened fruit from this yet so I can't really comment on the taste of it, but my sense is it's much better than most citranges with very little trifoliate off-flavor. Even though the plant itself is quite hardy, it does take at least until the end of November to mid-December for fruits to fully ripen. By that time frost threatens. So it's beneficial to have it in a microclimate. Amazingly though, fruit seems to be able to take at least mid-20s without damage. I suppose one could maybe throw a blanket over the fruit on especially cold nights. However we will also be experimenting with Thomasville Citrangequat. I have tasted many of those and love them! Sweeter than lemon and with edible skin. We already know what Mr. Texas will say -- 'anything with trifoliate in it is not worth growing.'

since we don't have a faq, i thought i'd just write this up and paste it whenever this question comes up... ***************** Here are a baker's dozen of crops that I've had some success with for the months of June through September. They can all be started/added to the garden anytime in june and the first weeks of july... Cassava. You'll need to find someone with cuttings. The cuttings root without a problem. I have started with pieces no larger than my thumb and, by the end of the season (Thanksgiving), they produced nice tubers. They are an easy, undemanding crop. The more care you take of them, the better they'll produce, but even without additional water or fertilizer, they'll still look good and produce something edible. Delicious boiled and mashed, or boiled and fried. Malanga. You can get tubers for these Elephant-ear lookalikes from Publix or any market that caters to folks rom the Caribbean. Look for smallish ones that are heavy for their size. Stick 'em in the ground and wait. Like cassava, these plants are pretty indifferent to conditions--they are, for instance, the only tropical staple that can be grown in shade. Mine last year produced poorly--bugs got them. I think that if I had planted them somewhere with more sun, added some compost, and fertilized them, they would have produced well. This year I was pleased to see half a dozen little plants appear where I'd pulled the original plants. Much like other alocasias, they must produce lots of little corm-lettes. We'll see if they produce better this year with all the rain. Okra. It does very well in large pots--better even than in the ground. Productive and tasty. I grow the burgundy available from Southern Exposure. The pods are edible even when they get large (six inches or longer). Not at all a fussy vegetable to cook--I slice it and fry it in olive oil and it's delicious. Deep-fried ain't half bad... Hot peppers. I've always had great luck with Tabascos, jalapenos, and habaneros. They do best in pots for me, and require daily watering and a bit of shade in the afternoon. When grown in pots, they're perennial--my Tabasco is four or five years old and produces better with every year. Caribbean seasoning peppers. There are several, and all look just like habaneros but are very mild. I grow a St. Lucia Yellow Seasoning pepper that's sweet and fruity and tasty. Prolific, too. Perennial in pots. Sweet potatoes. Couldn't be an easier, tastier, more prolific crop. I save back small potatoes from the winter garden, leaving them all winter on the back gazebo, then plant them in some well-drained compost in spring and cut the slips as they form. You can stick the slips directly in the ground and cover with compost, but it's a better bet to pot them up in the shade for a week. Give them room and a bit of water now and again. Roselle. I'm growing this mallow for the first time, in the same bed as the okra--they look great. Very pretty. Tasty drink made from its calyxes. I guess not technically a vegetable, but grown like one. Peanuts. Go buy some raw green peanuts from Publix, stick them in the ground anytime during the summer. Forget about them. Dig them out in November or December. Enjoy. Really, that easy. They need nothing. Okinawan spinach. Tasty, perennial, incredibly prolific, totally care-free. You'll need to find someone with cuttings... Good cooked or raw. High ornamental value. Small (100s or smaller) cherry tomatoes. These can be started anytime. I grow Matt's Wild, which are very motile and something of a pest... But tasty enough and low-maintenance. Just make sure to keep it in bounds. Cowpeas. I love my Mississippi Silver (from Southern Exposure). Totally undemanding, prolific and pretty. Very tasty. Belong in every garden. Limas. This year I'm growing Willow Leaf Lima (from Southern Exposure). Planted in the spring sometime, it's just now coming into production, but it's a great plant--vigorous, twining, pretty, drought-tolerant and prolific. The beans are smallish but tasty. Eggplants. They're perennial if you nurse them through the winter. I grow the "Little Fingers" which can be used small or left to grow large. (Interestingly, the "Little Fingers" have the largest leaf of any eggplant I've seen.) I love eggplant in Pasta Nora and as baba ganoush. On the herb front: Basil (especially Thai), scallions (which I start from roots bought at the grocer), Mexican tarragon (pretty, too!), wild arugula, fennel (currently under serious attack by the swallowtail cats), epazote, palo (not for the faint of heart!), leaf celery (which I use as a replacement for parsley). Rosemary, mint, and thyme struggle, but generally survive the summer. Summer savory and certain oreganos (large leafed) thrive. I also grow chaya, which is OK but more of an ornamental than a food plant. The butterflies love it. I'm sure there are other tropical crops to grow, but all of these crops are pretty easy. Many are perennial, and those that aren't can be started from saved seeds.

Hi there, I make mine with equal parts vodka, sour apple liqueur and white grape juice! Yummy.