(rhythmic music) >>As the growing season comes to a close here at Florosa, we're making sure to wrap up all of our fall harvesting, which for us includes roselle and lemongrass.

We grow as much roselle as our space can allow.

I think we have about 10 plants in the garden currently.

And it grows all year as a shrub, and then once the days start to shorten and the night start to lengthen, it starts to cool down, it begins to flower.

And they're beautiful flowers and they're beautiful to look at, but what we're waiting for is the calyx that is below the flower.

So here you have a flower that's about to bloom, and then we have a flower that has been spent.

And what we're waiting for is for that spent flower to shrivel, and then we'll pull that bit out.

And what we want is the calyx, which is this part here.

We'll harvest a bunch of these, and we'll peel off the hibiscus, the roselle, or in the Caribbean, as it's called, sorrel.

And this is the part that is made into tea, or we turn it into a little jam.

It's punchy like a cranberry would be.

Hibiscus benefits from full sun and rich soil.

Therefore, you want to make sure you're amending it with compost or fertilizer so that way your hibiscus is able to produce the most flowers and also the most calyxes possible.

Second, we have our lemongrass.

We start them in the spring, and then once it becomes fall, lemongrass does not survive the frost.

Once we know that that date is approaching, it becomes harvest time for lemongrass.

In Chinese and Hmong cultures, all parts of lemongrass are used, from the leaves all the way to the stems.

Make sure to wear gloves.

The leaves are sharp and they will cut you, kind of like a paper cut.

So you'll go to the base of your plant and look for a thicker stem.

You'll go down to the base of the stem and break it off, or it can be encouraged with a sharp pair of pruners.

There we go.

So I have the little stem here, which really is difficult to use so I'll end up composting this.

The bottom part, which is like the juicier part that ends up getting used in lots of cooking, we'll trim and keep.

And then the remaining stem we'll fold onto itself.

So you create one fold, a second fold, and now we get more into this leaf part.

It also can be helpful if you harvest all your lemongrass and let it wilt just a little bit, these leaves will bend a lot better.

But for now, since we're doing it, we're going to do it fresh.

It's possible, it's just a little bit more difficult.

So you have your two folds and then you begin to wrap.

So you wrap around your stem, moving down.

(leaves crunching) And I like to tuck my thumb right into the last loop, which in this case, I'll take off my gloves to do this final thread through.

So you pull the remaining leaf through the loop and you pull it tight, creating this lovely little bundle.

It's perfect to go into your stock.

And it's really great because we store these in the freezer that we use to infuse into our rice pudding, into tres leches liquids.

It's just full of flavor, and there's no use in wasting it.

If you didn't plant lemongrass this year, make sure to next year, because there's so many parts of this plant that you can use.

Good luck wrapping up your garden this fall.