Yeah that article which is ten years old, also has links to a list of other items in West AFrica. Better quit drinking coffee, using some wood products, stop developing West Africa etc., etc., etc. ----------------------------------- Sandy, I put it on heavy and it does change color and texture before it gets a total redo. When I bury my roses as I did for the past several years, I scrape away the hulls into piles and then push them back when the roses are uncovered. With my naturally black soil, the dark brown/black color the hulls eventually turn is good as everything blends aesthetically and for me it is/was much easier to scrape away the hulls than it was the Eucalyptus mulch I used before. I am trying another system this winter rather than scrape away and bury the roses, I will scrape the hulls into a mound over the cut-down rose bushes and then put the fabric and leaves of over that as it is the uncovering in spring that wreaks havoc. On two bushes I tried this on last winter the mounded cocoa bean hulls seemed ease the bushes through the nasty cold-warm-cold etc. that kills roses in spring better than with the buried ones that were pulled out of their holes. This year I disturbed the soil heavily when I roto-tilled between the bushes because a few items annoyed me once too often, and several of the rather sickly ones looked like they might join a couple of others as fuel for cooking steaks but after I applied a thick bed of cocoa bean hulls, which I always water heavily after applying as it forms hard wind but not water proof skin on the surface. The sickly ones recovered extremely well even when during the early onslaught of our semi-drought the roses got zero water for over two weeks.

It may be the way you prepared them for freezing - did you blanch them first and then into an ice bath? If not they turn mushy. Then drain well, pat dry, spread out on cookie sheet to flash freeze and then package them. Or it may be that you are just over-cooking them once you take them out of the freezer. I do not thaw first, just dump them into already boiling water, let it return to a boil and then reduce to simmer for approx. 5-6 min. And it could also be the quality of the beans themselves. Some varieties freeze better than others. And harvest them when still young and tender. If left on the vine too long before picking some varieties will lose all flavor. Dave

One thing that I have done, with jalapenos only so far, is to put them in a paper bag with a cut apple - which I think does the same thing as the tomato. I found that about half of the jalap. turned red overnight, and the rest wouldn't turn regardless of how long they were in the bag. The peppers also started to get really soft though. With the habs that I pruned, I just hung them up on a string in the kitchen and after 4 or 5 days most of them turned.

I don't think they'll ripen once they're cut off. But don't worry, you didn't cut them all off and you will be getting many more in the future anyway, so whether you wanted to use the hips for their seeds, or for making jam/tea, you'll still have lots of opportunities to do that. You could always cut them open to see how much flesh or seeds had developed inside. It's probable that any flesh would be too bitter to use at this stage though.