I’m enjoying bringing in the last of 2015’s citrus harvest while seeing the many blooms that will bring new citrus for this year.
The calamondins are long gone but there are still plenty of blood oranges.
They never become fully red in my climate like the blood oranges you may have seen in photos, but they do have some beautiful streaks of deep red through their centers. I have considered grafting them here and there onto some of my other citrus just for fun but never got around to it.
The other day the very last Ponderosa lemon on the tree by my south wall fell to the ground, fully ripe. Rachel took it and a few Myer lemons and made some amazing, fresh homemade lemonade for the children.
And even as that last fruit has come in… the blooms are vying for the chance to replace it many times over.
Though I don’t recommend planting citrus anymore thanks to the diseases, it’s really hard to keep my own advice.
I did write a sad song about greening, though. So there’s that.
The last citrus I planted was the Pineapple orange I mentioned in my post on fighting greening with a citrus tree guild.
If you’re interested in getting rapid production from your citrus trees, you might also appreciate my post on fertilizing citrus the way the commercial farmers do it.
That got my trees kicking this last year; however, I’m not sure how sustainable their long-term health will be if I did that year after year. I mix in compost and other good organic matter for them, too, so it’s not quite like the groves where you have a big patch of sand and the only food given to the trees is chemical fertilizer.
Generally I’m an organic gardener… yet the power of 10-10-10 is amazing.
Must… resist…!
4 responses to “The Marvelous Citrus of Spring”
My citrus trees are overwhelmed with blossoms, never have seen so many in the 7 years we’ve had them. I think due in large part due to the 10″ of rain in January, we usually have only 1″.
My calamondins, while the major production is over, are producing a few. The Persian Lime, which gave us 100s this year, not really much of an exaggeration, is laden with blossoms and fruit from pea-sized to golf ball sized.
As with you, we’ve had too many problems with the citrus and will not be planting any more or replacing when they die or cease producing.
Our loquat tree is so full of fruit the branches are bending down almost to the ground. At least this year they will be easy to pick. We picked our first 6 yesterday and will have to start harvesting on a daily basis. Hope to be able to freeze 30-40 lbs. Otherwise, they will go to waste as they don’t hold well after picking.
Off topic. When will your composting presentation from the food summit be available for purchase. I wasn’t able to get the registering to work and gave up after about six trys. I still want to see it to see what I’m not doing yet.
Sorry it didn’t work for you – might have been a browser issue or perhaps the registration emails were blocked by your email. I know a couple of people had issues they wrote me about.
The whole set of presentations are available as a set from the HGFS folks. I got to watch Lawton’s today and was quite impressed as always. At some point in the future I may sell mine alone – not sure. It’s in their hands for now as part of the deal we made.
“Though I don’t recommend planting citrus anymore thanks to the diseases”, does this mean your guild with the Pineapple orange wasn’t successful? Or is it too early to tell?