|
|
Post by blueadzuki on Jun 1, 2012 6:48:20 GMT -5
One thing about the basil seeds. If you do leave the capsules on the plant until they are throrougly dry and brown, it is important to get the seed BEFORE it rains. Basil seed (like that of most of the mint family) has a built in mucilagenous layer on the outside of the mature seed, that swells and retains water as the seed germinates. so if the mature seed gets wet, it will get sticky. As long as the capsule is still alive, it does a good job of keeping water out, but once it is brown and dead, it gets leaky, and the seed can get it's layer active. swell, and get "locked" in the capsule.
|
|
|
|
Post by mnjrutherford on Jun 1, 2012 7:28:26 GMT -5
Excellent advice. I had never noticed that trait until the day I threw out the dregs. It rained that evening and in the morning I was noticing all sorts of little "dots" of a whitish substance in the toss area. I was very puzzled as to what it was until I put 2 & 2 together.
Does cause another question to pop into my head regarding chia though. They have this same gelatenous stuff when wet and it's supposed to have all kinds of nutritional values. Wonder if the basil gel has the same qualities?
|
|
|
|
Post by blueadzuki on Jun 1, 2012 10:07:08 GMT -5
Excellent advice. I had never noticed that trait until the day I threw out the dregs. It rained that evening and in the morning I was noticing all sorts of little "dots" of a whitish substance in the toss area. I was very puzzled as to what it was until I put 2 & 2 together. Does cause another question to pop into my head regarding chia though. They have this same gelatenous stuff when wet and it's supposed to have all kinds of nutritional values. Wonder if the basil gel has the same qualities? It does. In fact, basil (or holy basil, in this case it doesn't matter which) seed drinks are quite popular in Asia www.bing.com/images/search?q=basil+seed+drink&id=705CA57A30847614C0D229946A3F5E6BEFD047D1&FORM=IQFRBA |
|
|
|
Post by Drahkk on Jun 1, 2012 14:37:51 GMT -5
Interesting. I've never noticed that trait, but my late summers are usually the driest part of the year, so that could be why. Then again, seeds that have gotten sticky would not roll out of dry flowers as easily, would they? Or are they redrying on the outside and sealing water in?
MB
|
|
|
|
Post by blueadzuki on Jun 1, 2012 17:32:35 GMT -5
Interesting. I've never noticed that trait, but my late summers are usually the driest part of the year, so that could be why. Then again, seeds that have gotten sticky would not roll out of dry flowers as easily, would they? Or are they redrying on the outside and sealing water in? MB No, once the layer expands. that's it, the seeds (a flower produces 4) lock into each other and become a single, un dividable mass that will stay in the flower no matter how hard you shake). For basil it's annyoing, for any of the other members of the mint family (most of who have much smaller seeds) it makes spreading them all but impossible. Even the few bigger seeded ones become a headache. When in my seed sorting I come upon the odd seed of Musk Mint ( Hyptis suaveolens) more often or not it's two seed (they are much bigger than a basil seed, roughly that of a pepper or tomato seed, so there are only 2 in the flower) it's more often than not 2 seeds glue together (luckily they are big enough to tease apart) |
|
|
|
Post by mountaindweller on Jun 3, 2012 23:34:51 GMT -5
Thanks for the basil advice!
This spring/summer I will get a kaffir lime, lemon grass and curry leaf. I hope it will survive, but all three are awesome in the kitchen. I had all three when we lived further north and lemon grass just grew like a weed.
|
|
|
|
Post by mnjrutherford on Jun 4, 2012 5:43:43 GMT -5
OooOOo Kaffir lime!!!! WONDERful stuff! Good luck with those three!!!! I wonder if I could do them here? Not to keen on the lemon grass or the curry leaf, but the lime would be fabulous.
|
|
|
|
Post by blueadzuki on Jun 4, 2012 7:14:57 GMT -5
OooOOo Kaffir lime!!!! WONDERful stuff! Good luck with those three!!!! I wonder if I could do them here? Not to keen on the lemon grass or the curry leaf, but the lime would be fabulous. Outdoors, in the ground no, Citrus hystix is only hardy to around zone 9 so your a little on the cold side (though you are just fine if you want to plant a yuzu tree) Unless you want to wrap it up every winter. In a pot there would be little to no problem at least temperature wise, and I hystix can produce fruit on a tree in a pot. Two things though. One, hystix has wicked thorns (about 2-3 inches long) so you may want to put it in places where rambuctious pets (or children) will not run into it (that's one of the reasons I never got one, we have a cat that likes to do the "round the house 500" and most of our floors are polished, low friction wood) Second DO NOT EVER try an make limeade out of the leftover juice, it tastes TERRIBLE ( hystix apparently has a lot of the aromatic rind oils in the juice as well, so the limeade you get tastes like what you would obtain if you tossed a normal lime, skin and all, into a food processor, then filtered the resultant slurry and added water and sugar.) Actually I take that back, I may be growing one. I have a whole rack of seed grown citruses outside on my patio (normally they are on radiators in my sunroom, but I put them out for the summer for the air, and so I can put the air conditioner in!) One of the seedlings in one of the pots looks a little different from the others; it's leaves have a flanged petioles (in a hystix that's that second "leaf" you seed behind the first one) whereas all of the other have normal ones. So it may have a few Makrut genes (I try not to use the "Kaffir" name, as some people are touchy enough to take offense at it). Problem is, I don't remember what ANY of the trees are in that pot, the rest I know, the odd lemon, yuzu/kabosu, wong pei, orangequat, mango oranges. But I have completely forgotten what kind of pips I planted that pot with. More yuzu (the loose skinned kind)? Ugli's? Giant Kunquats? Blood Oranges? I have no clue. I doubt it's a Makrut, but given the number of citruses I have grown over the yearsm it's not exactly impossible. |
|
|
|
Post by circumspice on Jun 4, 2012 12:58:22 GMT -5
My sister planted the pips out of an ordinary looking grocery store lemon. What grew from those pips was a little weird looking. The tree was pretty small & it was very thorny, with leaves that looked like they were growing out of the end of another leaf. It was also somewhat cold hardy, it could take a light freeze with no ill effects. It had survived for nearly 2 years, when a hard freeze killed it. I looked it up on the internet & the leaves looked like the leaves from a Kafir lime, but the pips came out of a lemon. What the...?
|
|
|
|
Post by johninfla on Jun 4, 2012 13:17:50 GMT -5
When I lived in central Florida as a kid, my dad and I planted lemon seeds from a wild lemon tree. The trees were thorny and grew super tall but they were loaded with lemons long before I left for college. I wonder if they are still there?
On another note, this is a thread about medicinal herbs.....I grow maypop (P. Incarnata) for flowers and I'm trying to grow enough to make juice out of (as a replacement for the tropical passionfruit) but I read that it is used medicinally in Europe.......does anyone know about that and what do you use it for???
John
|
|
|
|
Post by caledonian on Jun 4, 2012 17:03:23 GMT -5
It's the leaves that have a medicinal value. They're used as mild sedatives and antidepressants.
|
|
|
|
Post by blueadzuki on Jun 4, 2012 17:09:10 GMT -5
When I lived in central Florida as a kid, my dad and I planted lemon seeds from a wild lemon tree. The trees were thorny and grew super tall but they were loaded with lemons long before I left for college. I wonder if they are still there? On another note, this is a thread about medicinal herbs.....I grow maypop (P. Incarnata) for flowers and I'm trying to grow enough to make juice out of (as a replacement for the tropical passionfruit) but I read that it is used medicinally in Europe.......does anyone know about that and what do you use it for??? John . Though I should point out that maypop is also sometimes used a a synonym for mayapple en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podophyllum_peltatum#Medicinal_use[/url] which certainly is used medicinally by some people (I actually found mayapples once at colledge, but was afraid to eat them. though they do smell good, almost like cherimoya.) Returing to the citrus, I think the root cause of a lot of variation is quite simply the same reason that you get a lot of variation in apples. You've got a group of plants that are insect pollinated,are often grown in areas with many closely related species (a lot of small citrus farms do lemons, limes, oranges and many others) and are usually propigated vegitatively. God knows what the actual genetics of any seed is under those circumstances. plant a seed, and nearly ANYTHING can come up. Sometimes it is good (the ulgli come to mind, apparently that was simply discovered in a grove in Jamaica. But you'll probably get a lot of just plain werid mixes, of strange aspect. circumspice it's a long shot, but maybe your siters tree had some genes from an Ichang Papeda. Those are famous for being extremely cold hardy (they can take temps to -15) Yuzu's are part Ichang (which is why they are so cold hardy as well, though less than a full breed Ichang Papeda) I suppose Papedas would be a real cash crop, if the fruit didn't generally taste terrible. But I think a lot of citrus grower do put in a few Ichang papadas or Ichang lemons (what you get when you cross a papeda with a grapefruit) just for that reason; being so cold hardy, they're handy pollinators. BTW I have to thank you people, the process of looking up the data for this reply led me to the answer to my mystery plant, it is a Yuzu (they have the flattended petiole) Looks like the others must be Kabosu's. johninfla, since you grew some lemon trees, mayble you can answer a question about mine that has been bugging me. As I said, my tree is from the seed of an odd looking lemon I bought a few years ago. Chartreuse rind and tasted really perfumey (I half think that it may have been more citron than lemon) but that is not the only odd thing about the tree, the leaves smell like lemons. I don't mean they have that house cleaner smell that the leaves of all citrus trees have (I think that oil is called petigrain), I mean the leaves (at least when they are youngish) smell like lemon peel. Is this normal? I've rubbed the new leaves of all my other citrus trees as they have come up but they do not smell like citrus fruit (except oddly, for that yuzu I mentioned) but as this is my first and only lemon tree, it may be normal for the species. Do you happen to remember if the leaves of your lemons smelled like lemons? |
|
|
|
Post by johninfla on Jun 5, 2012 7:08:42 GMT -5
[
johninfla, since you grew some lemon trees, mayble you can answer a question about mine that has been bugging me. As I said, my tree is from the seed of an odd looking lemon I bought a few years ago. Chartreuse rind and tasted really perfumey (I half think that it may have been more citron than lemon) but that is not the only odd thing about the tree, the leaves smell like lemons. I don't mean they have that house cleaner smell that the leaves of all citrus trees have (I think that oil is called petigrain), I mean the leaves (at least when they are youngish) smell like lemon peel. Is this normal? I've rubbed the new leaves of all my other citrus trees as they have come up but they do not smell like citrus fruit (except oddly, for that yuzu I mentioned) but as this is my first and only lemon tree, it may be normal for the species. Do you happen to remember if the leaves of your lemons smelled like lemons?
[/quote]
Oh boy!! I wish I did remember........ I left for college in 1986. I'm sorry about that. I do remember it was a great thing that my dad and I shared, and I wish I'd listened more to him back then. He was always trying to get me to try to sell some plants to a nursery or get started in a plant business. (something I would love today) Back then I was much to "smart" to listen to my dad. I miss him!!
John
|
|
|
|
Post by blueadzuki on Jun 5, 2012 8:35:55 GMT -5
Oh boy!! I wish I did remember........ I left for college in 1986. I'm sorry about that. I do remember it was a great thing that my dad and I shared, and I wish I'd listened more to him back then. He was always trying to get me to try to sell some plants to a nursery or get started in a plant business. (something I would love today) Back then I was much to "smart" to listen to my dad. I miss him!! John My father was an amazing man. The older I got, the smarter he got. - Mark Twain Don't worry about it, I assume that at some point I'll bump into another lemon tree and can take a surruptitious rub and sniff off a new leaf. that may clear things up. ' I get it, my Dad is encourageing me to sell off some of the excess wong pei seedling (I've got a whole pot full so it's not like I need them all) on e-bay. Its not like I oppose this idea, I think it is a good one, but the paranoid part of me worries about what will happed when some buyer asks the critical question (are the sweet wong pei or sour wong pei) and I have to answer I do not know. (wong pei fruit comes in two majpor varites, a round fruited one (which is very sour) and an oval/olive shaped one (which is sweeter) The original bunches of fruit I got had both kinds, but stupid me forgot to keep the containers of seed discrete, so what is growing in that pot could be either. I actually toyedy with getting a few new bunches and starting from scratch, but it seems that pretty much all the wong pei avialble this season are sours.) |
|
|
|
Post by mountaindweller on Jun 5, 2012 17:43:49 GMT -5
The Markut (K-lime) I had didn't produce thorns at all. I had it only little time before we moved and it never grew big as I used it all the time though. It is the leaves you are using not the fruit. That means as long as the tree survives, you have what you need. BTW the most cold hardy citrus are kumquats and they grow well up here, but you must look for the better varieties, which you can eat straight from the tree rind and all.
As a medicinal herb I have chinese knotweed, polygonum chinese (http://www.beautanicals.com.au/knotweed.html) which I don't use but it's a very pretty plant it dies down in winter here.
|
|
