Frozen Fruit Trees

In the deep freeze of 2021 we struggled in tropical south Louisiana.  We did our best to cover the garden with tarps to protect the vegetables.  Largely, we were successful and our spring harvest was pretty much unaffected.  The fruit trees, on the other hand, were dealt a ferocious blow.  A couple weeks ago, I cut down a big navel orange tree that initially showed signs of coming back, but then kicked the bucket.

Our navel orange tree in the back yard lost all its leaves and was barren for a long time.  Russ, our horticulture major son, advised me to give it time.  I did, and he was right.  Slowly, little shoots of green emerged from brown, seemingly brown limbs.  Once the tree showed recovery, a began to prune off the completely dead branches.  I still need to get a ladder to prune off the top branches, but I'll get 'em.

This orange tree has yielded us hundreds of pounds of fruit each year.  Sadly, we figured that our orange harvest would have to come from the produce section of the grocery store this year.  Until...  Well, would you look at there?  Orange blossoms!  Five months late, but they are there!

Those blooms turn into fruit.  Granted, it won't be the harvest of previous years, but we are blessed to get some fruit after the hard freeze.

In looking at our three tangerine trees, I had to chop one down.  It succumbed to the freeze and just never came back.  We still have two in our back yard.  They are putting on leaves, albeit slow.  One thing I was careful to observe was to ensure that the growth was coming back ABOVE the graft.  Any thing below the graft is from the root stock and would not give good fruit.  Everything coming back is above the graft.  Now, I'm not seeing any blooms on the tangerines.  We probably won't have any tangerines this year.

The grapefruit tree took a roundhouse kick to the chin from the freeze.  Despite mulching it deep, it still took a beating.  It is, however, coming back, but it sort of looks like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree!  It sacrificed a bunch of limbs.  Perhaps without any fruit, the tree will put forth its energy in growing big limbs to support a huge grapefruit crop for next year!