If you are tired of seeing prices on food rising every time you shop, then fight back! While nobody is talking about the inflation in food prices, most consumers know that prices are way up.

Try these 4 simple money saving strategies to help reduce spending:

1. Know your prices and shop around. Money experts would advise you to keep track of the price of things you use the most in a price book. If you are to busy to invest in making a price book, then mentally keep track of prices on the items your use regularly. You will begin to notice where items are the least expensive.

2. Know that the warehouse stores like Sams and Costco usually have fair prices but are generally not lowest price you will ever find in town. Don’t get me wrong, I l love some of the bargains to be found in these stores and shop there myself. I do caution you to be selective in your purchases, because not every item is a good value. It is exceedingly easy to spend more than you planned on when you shop in this type of store. Check your unit prices to be sure you are getting a good price.

Quoting Abraham, he says that under intense shade conditions the bisexual types produce more female flowers and less hermaphrodite flowers.

`Bangka’, for which a synonym seems to be ‘Muntok’, resembles the Sarawak `Sarikei’ and was the main clone for the production of white pepper by the Chinese on the island of Bangka.`Phnom-Pon’ is a large-leaved cultivar in Kampuchea (Cambodia); `Kamchay’ is a small-leaved cultivar there.

Some crosses have been produced at the Pepper Research Station, Panniyur in Kerala, India, of which ‘Panniyur I’ shows promise. Some crosses have also been made in Sarawak. Most of the vines had died as a result of disease or old age.

Hermaphrodite pepper flowers are protogynous, the stigmas being exserted 3-8 days before the dehiscence of the anthers. In Puerto Rico, stigmas may be receptive for up to 10 days with peak receptivity 3 to 5 days after exsertion. Flowering begins at the base of the spike and continues towards the tip over a period of 7 to 8 days.

They have a larger percentage driage when made into black or white pepper. Cultivars which had the highest percentage of bisexual flowers gave the highest yields.

You have to start a garden by getting the soil prepared and then you can plant your garden plants. You can either plant seedlings or sow seeds. Sowing seeds directly can save you money. All you have to do is spend a couple of bucks on a few packs of seeds.

The first way to sow seeds is by first sowing them in small trays and letting them grow for a few weeks. Once they are bigger and growing, you can transplant them into the garden. Start with some planter trays. Fill the trays will soil, pat it down,and get the soil a little moist. Spread a few seeds over the top of the soil and then cover them with a small layer of additional soil.

After a few weeks the seeds will have grown into seedlings. When there is no longer danger of frost in your garden, you can transplant only the strongest seedlings into the garden. You get the advantage of only using the strong plants and having them already grown some.

The sucking insects, thrips and aphides, are without doubt the worst enemies of all plants, not only dahlias. They live by sucking the sap from the plant, causing great damage through excessive loss of sap, and, in addition, are the vector insects responsible for the transmission of virus.

Parathion and T.E.P.P. are very dangerous to use, and II.E.T.P., although not so toxic, is likely to have unpleasant effects unless protective clothing is worn. A more recently introduced phosphor group insecticide, Malathion, is no more dangerous to use than either nicotine or lead-arsenate, and is extremely efficient.

Slugs and snails are also rather fond of the young dahlia plants, whether in the frame or in the garden, so it is as well to discourage these. Clean holes in the leaves are usually the tell-tale sign of slug attack, although the larger slugs and snails will chew complete leaves and even the growing points of the dahlia.

If you want to have a beautiful healthy garden, you need excellent soil. If you have soil full of rocks and clay and no nutrients, you r plants will not thrive. If you give your plants no nutrients, there is no way they can grow up healthy. Water will help plants grow but not grow strong if there are no nutrients.

If you are going to plant the seeds first in planter trays, use regular potting soil. It doesn’t need to be incredibly nutrient risk because it won’t be in that soil alone very long. Just make sure the soil is packed in well to help the roots.

Before you transplant the seedlings, cultivate the soil. You need to break up all the clumps and remove all the rocks, roots, and clumps. Use gardening tools to help you such as a cultivator, hoe, pickax, and shovel.

Use a garden hoe to chop up the smaller clumps so that you can break up the soil as much as possible. Finally, use a cultivator to continue breaking up the clumps and to scoop and rake out the rocks, roots. etc.

Perhaps the finest thing about the dahlia is its internationalism, for the varieties grown in this country originated all over the world. This is probably equally true of nearly every other dahlia growing country. This means of course that there are an enormous number of varieties available, but has also meant that the standards of quality have risen greatly over the years.

In addition the committee is responsible both for the selection of dahlias for trial at the Royal Horticultural Societies Gardens at Wisley and for the judging of such varieties. It advises both societies on matters of mutual interest, and is concerned with maintaining good relationship between the two societies and other kindred bodies.

Certain members of this committee are responsible for the compilation of the National Register of Varieties, a register which is maintained to try to eliminate confusion and duplication of naming wherever possible.

The oleoresins are prepared mainly by the flavour industries of Western Europe and North America; and they have similar applications to the ground spices in the flavouring of processed foods.

Cassia buds which enter commerce are, as already stated, the dried unripe fruits contained within the calyx cup. They are smooth and greyish-brown or reddish-brown in colour, 6-10 mm long and about 5 mm in diameter at the tip; the calyx is hard and wrinkled. They have a spicy cinnamon-like odour and a warm sweet pungent flavour. They are used in sweet pickles.

The harvested bark is thus of two kinds – rectangular slabs and quills, the latter being obtained mainly from the smaller branches. The unrolled slabs, which are more valuable, undergo complicated traditional methods of curing in different parts of Vietnam. Most of these method involve alternate washing and drying, with minor fermentation in heaps. Finally, the slabs are tied around thick bamboo for drying and so assume a broadly curved appearance. The thinner bark from the smaller branches is prepared as quills by scraping and drying in the usually way.

A small amount of a third type, cassia vera, produced mainly in Java, Celebes and other neighbouring islands, is exported mainly from Makassar, the German Federal Republic being the chief importers.

Within each category, there is a further classification according to the thickness of the quills. Ceylon cinnamon quills imported into the United Kingdom are mainly used industrially in the manufacture of a wide variety of processed foods or for the production of cinnamon bark oil or cinnamon oleoresin. A small quantity is either cut up into pieces about 15 cm or ground into a fine powder or mixed with other spices by spice merchants or millers for the retail pharmaceutical and grocery trades.

The quality of cinnamon and the various cassias is primarily assessed on the basis of their appearance and on the content and aroma/flavour character of their volatile oil. The relative importance of these quality attributes is dependent, however, on their intended end-use. The appearance of the spice is rather more important when it is to be sold in the whole form on the retail market than if it is to be used for grinding or for the preparation of the essential oil or the oleoresin.

In Sri Lanka the trees flower in January and the fruits ripen six months later. The fruits are avidly eaten by birds and so it is usual to net the trees if seeds are required for planting. The fruit is a fleshy ovoid drupe, black and 1.5-2.0 cm long when ripe, with the enlarged calyx at the base.

The other main cinnamon area is the Galle and Matara Districts of the Southern Province, where the lateritic gravelly soil of the low country produces more rapid growth, but the bark obtained is somewhat thicker and coarser than that of the Negombo District. Rocky and stony ground is unsuitable. Waterlogged and marshy areas should be avoided, as they give an undesirable bitter product which is much less aromatic.

The crop is usually grown without shade, but when clearing forest land for fresh plantations, to leave tall trees at intervals of about 15 m to provide light shade. Lionnet (1961) records that cinnamon grows semi-wild on 4 of the 28 granitic islands of the Seychelles group, that it seldom occurs on the rest of the granitic islands and is absent from the 64 coral islands. It does best on 2 of the largest and highest islands of Mahe and Silhouette, which have some 2 540 mm of rainfall per annum.

Chinese cassia is cultivated mainly in the provinces of Kwangsi and Kwangtung in southern China. It was once harvested from wild bushes growing in the mountains in addition to cultivated bushes, but is now restricted to the latter.

C. cassia is an evergreen tree, aromatic in all its parts, which resembles C. verwn, but is larger in size. It reaches a height of 18 m with a girth of 1.5 m when left uncut. The bark is grey and smooth and is thick in the adult tree. The leaves are oblong-elliptic, dark shiny green, about 15 cm long and 7.5 cm wide, with 3 prominent nerves from the base, borne on short, thick petioles. The flowers in a lax spreading panicle are small and are borne in a cymose arrangement of threes on short pedicels. The panicles, which are terminal and axillary, have long peduncles.

The perianth, which is pale yellow in colour, is deeply divided into 6 oblong blunt lobes. There are 9 functional stamens and 3 staminodes. The anthers are four-celled, opening by 4 valves or flaps. The central superior pistol has an oval ovary and a stout, short style. The fruits are smaller than those of C. verum and are black, pulpy, aromatic, elliptic drupes with a single seed borne in the cup of the calyx lobes. The fruits are avidly eaten by birds which disperse the seeds.