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| Hi,
I am trying to gather rose hips from my rose bushes for the first time to make tea. I read that it should be gathered between the months of September to mid October. The hips are still green and was wondering if they are ripe as it is now the beginning of November. I've picked them all and when I checked to see how to dry them on the internet, I noticed that all the rose hips were small and red in color. Mine are large and green. Is this still okay to use? Thanks, any help is much appreciated. |
Follow-Up Postings:
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| Suemae, you honestly need to be sure no systemic chemicals have been used on the roses before you consume them. Hips are very similar to apples, to which they are related. Some remain green, while others turn various other colors. Basically, if the hip is at least about a hundred days old, the seeds are ripe so the pulp should also be fairly ripe. Yours won't appear as the ones you've seen on line unless they are from the same type of rose. If those on line are from a species and yours are from modern shrubs, they won't appear similar. The nutritional values may also be rather different. But, the main thing I would suggest is to make sure no one has used any kind of systemic fungicide or pesticide on any of those rose plants. You definitely don't want to ingest those types of chemicals. Kim |
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| We have had these roses for more than 15 years. We have sprayed the bushes a long, long time ago and haven't done it for many years now. (At least 5 years) Would it be safe to consume the rose hip? Thanks for your reply |
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| "Sprays" can be systemic, such as Orthene, or Orthonex, to name just two. Or, they can be non systemic. Systemic chemicals absorb into the plant and flow with the sap, potentially getting in to all the plant parts. Non systemic ones remain on the surface of the plant and can be washed off. They are not just sprays, though. Bayer (and others) offers several products in granular as well as liquid form, often incorporated with fertilizer, that can be used to help prevent diseases and insect issues. If any of these have been used recently, they can also pose potential issues. If you haven't fertilized, there shouldn't be a problem. If you have, try remembering if what you used had any of these systemic substances. If they haven't, you haven't contaminated the plant parts with systemic chemicals. I have no information how long systemics can remain in the plant, but most often, their effective life is two to six weeks, depending upon many factors. I would venture to guess that if nothing has been used on them for five years, you should be pretty safe. Kim |
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| I read somewhere that at least SOME of the systemic chemicals used in the soil, to be absorbed by the plant can persist there for as long as six years. Jeri |
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| Well.....the amount of spraying associated with almost all edible crops makes the home gardeners spray regime look positively healthful. Unless specifically buying organically produced food, most fruit and vegetables are routinely sprayed up to 10 times during a growing season. In comparison, I cannot imagine Suemae's rose heps could possibly be a cause for concern - although I do usually use red heps from basic dogroses. There are heps and heps (I believe rugosa heps are popular for jelly) but hopefully, someone less culinarily challenged than myself will chime in with more info. |
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| Yes food crops can be sprayed pretty frequently BUT different chemicals are used on food crops than on garden ornamentals. For one thing, chemicals registered for food crops often have a short life span, so they'll 'fade away' before the food gets eaten, whereas in the garden we tend to want the chemical to last as long as possible so we don't have to reapply. If it's been 5 years since you used anything on these roses then I would assume the hips are as safe as anything else. Beyond that I don't know how to harvest hips. If you're in BC Canada keep in mind that your seasons are different from everyone else on line, and here in Washington just south of BC we're having a very late season this year, on top of our late summer/fall crops always being later than everyone else's anyway due to our cool summers. Corn and tomatoes don't even start to ripen here until September. And as mentioned, every kind of rose has unique hips for color and size. Local wild roses here have ripe hips now. What's not rotting in all the rain. |
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