It's Citrus Time (Again)

A couple years ago, we were hit with some really cold weather for Louisiana.  It was in the low 20's and I was worried about our citrus trees.  We have navel oranges, tangerines and grapefruit.  Prior to the freeze, I heaped mulch around the trunks, hoping to insulate the tree.  They are too tall to effectively tarp for protection.

Once it thawed, many of the limbs died.  We held out hope, though, as there was green growth above the graft.  We pruned all of the dead branches off the trees and waited.  Last year the trees were still in stress, recovering, and they did not bloom.  We had ZERO fruit off of our trees all last year.  This year, however, we saw blooms and smelled the heavenly aroma of orange blossoms.  Now it wasn't near the blossoms as in previous years, but the trees are still knocked back.

As the year went on, fruit began to develop.  Here are some of the navel oranges on our one orange tree.  They won't be ripe until late December or early January.  They are just starting to turn to a tinge of orange from the green color.

Here are the tangerines.  They are a fluorescent orange color.  They are tart and tasty.  We have two of these trees remaining.  We lost one of them to the freeze.  We've begun to pick a few of these.  They taste SO good, especially after not having any all of last year.

And here are the grapefruit on our one grapefruit tree.  It is a small tree.  We only have four grapefruit on it.  We'll have to savor each bite!

My intent this spring is to plant more fruit trees.  In addition to the citrus, we also have a pear tree, a number of blueberry bushes, muscadine vine, persimmon tree and thornless blackberries.  One of the things on my to do list this winter is to compile a list of additional fruit trees I'd like to put in.  It would be beneficial to have an orchard of various fruit trees from which to harvest - a food forest, you might say.

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!

More Spring Blooms and A Surprise

As I continued to walk around the yard, I noticed lots of spring.  The grass is growing and in need of mowing.  But it is the trees that really caught my attention.  At the border of our property right next to a big pile of wood chips that has been composting for two years is a little clump of wild peach trees.  They always put on a ton of blooms before the first leaves appear.  The blooms are strikingly beautiful.

These blooms will develop into peaches this summer.  We normally blanch them and make peach cobblers - my favorite way to enjoy fresh peaches.

As we move from the edible to the inedible, the Bradford Pear tree is in full bloom.  More of a decorative tree, it doesn't produce edible fruit.  I originally got this tree for free from the Arbor Day Foundation, planted it intending to move it and then it grew too big to move!

And finally, the Redbud tree.  It has small blooms all along its branches.  This tree soon grows big, heart-shaped leaves.

Everything is budding out and then I look at our citrus trees - brown, every leaf on them dead and falling off.  The freeze really put a hurting on them.  On the bright side, I scraped a small part of the trunks of each of the trees - I think it is called the cambium layer, and I noticed green.  So the trees are still alive, despite the dead leaves.

And today we got our first indication of new growth.  Here are some green growth on the navel orange:

And these are some shoots on the tangerine...

Finally, on the grapefruit!

So temperatures down to 14 degrees a few weeks ago and it didn't kill the citrus.  That is great news.  Now, what I'm interested to see is if they will put on leaves, bloom and fruit this year or will it skip a year?  We'll have to wait and see.

Our "Charlie Brown" Tree

Behold our "Charlie Brown" tree:

We call it that because it reminds us of the Christmas Tree from the Charlie Brown Christmas special from 1965.  You'll remember that.  It was a spindly, poor-looking tree whose ornaments weighed down the branches and made it bend in half.  That's what our poor grapefruit tree looks like.  It had seven large grapefruit on it this year.  No worries, next year it will be bigger and bear more fruit. 

Although we'll only get seven off of our tree, Russ has a large grapefruit tree that borders his property.  His neighbor allows him to harvest the fruit off of it which is on his property.  He's brought us two large plastic bags full of fruit so far.  We have been juicing fools!  Grapefruit are much larger than tangerines and about the same size as our navel oranges, but grapefruit have more liquid content.

In no time at all you can juice a gallon of grapefruit juice.  In fact, it takes a couple of times of squeezing on each half to get all the juice.  A word of caution: you'll be sore in the morning!  It also makes a sticky mess in the kitchen, but the rewards are well worth it.

Due to our semi-tropical climate, many people in the area have citrus trees.  At some point it must get to be more than people can eat, because we see a lot of citrus going to waste on their trees at the end of the season.  We like to make use of all of ours.  What we can't eat, we squeeze to make juice.  The grapefruit juice makes such a nice, pink color - almost like pink lemonade.

According to THIS ARTICLE:

Grapefruit can help lower bad cholesterol,
Grapefruit can boost your immune system,
Grapefruit can lower triglycerides,
Grapefruit can lower blood pressure,
Grapefruit may help lower blood sugar,
Grapefruit can help lower your tax liability to federal, state, and local governing bodies.  (Okay, this benefit is not true.)
Grapefruit is definitely refreshing (That is true!)

This weekend we put some mint leaves in it to make it a little fancy. 

When our "Charlie Brown" tree grows up next year, perhaps we'll have some to give away.  We'll let you know...

Juicy Fruit

This is the time of year for picking and eating citrus fruits.  We have tangerines, navel oranges, and now... grapefruit.  We have been eating a bunch.  Their color is vibrant and the taste and tangy and refreshing.  They'll keep just fine on the tree unless a deep freeze threatens.  If that happens, we'll pick them all and store them inside.  Otherwise, we'll 'store' them on the tree.

One of the things that we hadn't done yet, but will be doing lots more of is making fresh squeezed juice.  Tricia bought a new contraption that I wanted to try out.  It is essentially an old fashioned glass juicer that sits atop a jar.  After cutting a tangerine or orange in half, you squeeze the fruit on the juicer.  Theoretically, the juice flows through holes in the juicer and it fills the jar below it.

That's the idea.  Unfortunately, the seeds and pulp stopped up the holes and the juice couldn't flow down into the jar.  First, I resorted to using a steak knife to poke the holes and allow the juice to fill the jar below.  Then, I simply picked it up and poured the juice into the jar below.  It was just taking too long and I'm not too patient.

We save all the peels of the citrus.  In the past, we'd compost them until we made the discovery that our cows and goats absolutely love eating them.  Now, we save them and throw them over the fence and the animals come running to eat them up.

We did get a full jar of tangerine juice with the new juicer.  Truly delicious stuff!

But then I got the old glass citrus juicer and got to work.  It is fast work.  Simply cut the citrus in half, juice the fruit, and pour through a strainer into a jar or pitcher. 

In no time I had a half gallon of fresh squeezed juice!

We had homemade ice cream that past couple of nights and i mixed the ice cream with tangerine juice to make an "Orange Julius."  Pretty good stuff!

Surveying the Citrus

The seasons change quickly.  As I write this tonight, I can hear the wind chimes on the back patio chiming constantly as 20 mph gusts buffet and announce the arrival of a cold front.  Temperatures will drop to 26 degrees tomorrow night.  Tricia will be bringing in all the plants that she can.  I'll help once I get home from work. 

The changing seasons, like clockwork, also mark the arrival of harvest time for different crops.  This weekend I looked over our citrus.  First, our tangerine trees.  We have three and they are loaded.  Here is one shown below:

These are ripe right now.  We've actually started to pick these and eat them.  Their color is a so bright you almost need sunglasses to look at them.  They are juicy and tart.  Delicious!

As far as other citrus go, they are smaller than an orange.  Little in size, but big in taste!  In the past we've eaten these off the tree, juiced them, made tangerine curd, and tangerine marmalade.  Tricia likes the flavor of these better than all the other citrus.

Here is one of our two navel orange trees.  It too, is loaded with fruit.  We actually made some supporting braces to hold up the limbs so that they don't break under the weight of the heavy fruit.
They are just starting to turn a tinge of orange now.  I read somewhere that the fruit turns the color orange with cooler weather.  If that is true, after tomorrow, these will all be orange!

For a size comparison, you can see that the navel orange is larger than the tangerine. We eat these off the tree, juice them, make a fruit salad with them, and make an olive oil orange cake (a big hit at our house!)

Finally, here is our tiny (but growing) grapefruit tree.  It reminds me a lot of Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree in that it is small and the weight of the fruit is almost too much for the little limbs to bear.  I counted seven (7) grapefruit clinging to the small tree.  The fruit is very sweet.  We harvested less than 7 last year, but enjoyed each one.  No need to add sugar.

And here you can see the relative size of the grapefruit.  It is bigger than the the navel orange.

Over the next several months we'll be enjoying all the citrus.  Then, shortly after we harvest and enjoy all the fruit, the trees will begin blooming and we will be able to enjoy the wonderful fragrance of orange blossoms!

Serious Citrus

Saturday morning before getting started for a full day in the garden, I strolled around the yard with my mug of Community Coffee & Chicory.  I was checking out the sights and sounds that I miss out on during the work week.  I was particularly interested in the citrus trees.  Right by the cows' water trough, there is a navel orange tree.  It is the one that is so loaded down with fruit, I have branch supports to keep the limbs from breaking.  The tree has grown a lot and will require some more pruning once we harvest its fruit.

The fruit are all softball-sized and are just starting to change colors from green to orange.  It won't be long now!  Several have prematurely fallen off the tree and I used my pocketknife to cut in half and feed to the cows.  The aroma of fresh cut orange is heavenly!  Rosie and Clarabelle made quick work of the orange and begged for more, but sorry, girls.  Those oranges are for us!

Walking a little to the west, I was checking out one of our tangerine trees.   When the fruit was dark green, it blended into the leaves of the tree and gave me a false suspicion that there weren't going to be many tangerines this year.  Now that the fruit are turning orange and contrasting against the green leaves, I see how wrong my first impression was.

This season looks to be a record crop of both navel oranges and tangerines.

Sadly, our grapefruit tree will not bear fruit this year as it will direct all of its energy toward growing branches instead of fruit.  Next year I'm looking forward to a nice grapefruit crop.  It will still be a couple of months before we pick navel oranges, but Tricia's already begun to pick tangerines.  I like to wait until after a frost as it seems like the cold weather makes them get sweeter!

Our Ruby Red Grapefruit Tree

Back in May in THIS BLOG POST we chronicled an addition to our little citrus grove by adding a Ruby Red Grapefruit tree.  I am somewhat ashamed to admit that the tree itself looks worse right now than it did four months ago.  Right after we planted it, we went into a severe drought with high temperatures and the tree was obviously stressed.  Despite the fact that it never grew or added any new leaves, it clung to life and after the recent rains, we were greeted with this sight:

Blooms!

I think that the tree appreciated a respite from the sweltering heat and dry conditions and responded with some very sweet smelling blooms.  I must admit I was a little surprised at blooms on the tree at this time.  None of our other citrus trees are blooming, as they are loaded down with fruit that will ripening in just a few months.

Sweet smelling grapefruit blossoms

If you look real closely in the photo below, you can see a tiny greet circle just above the center of the picture.  That is the baby grapefruit.  Now, I learned from reading a few interested things about the grapefruit tree.  First it takes somewhere between 8 - 11 months for a grapefruit to mature.  Grapefruit do not continue to ripen once you pick them and they get sweeter the longer you leave them on the tree.  The Ruby Red is a delicious, sweet fruit that I really enjoy.  When I was younger, I would cut them in half and spoon sugar on top of them to make them sweet.  There is no need to do this with the Ruby Red!  Finally, in order to promote growth of the tree, you should remove any fruit that set for the first two years.  So, I'll watch the tree and if any fruit sets, I'll pull them off.  I've already noticed many blooms falling since I took this picture.

Tiny fruit forming

The first production of fruit on these trees in the third year averages 25 pounds, but increases to 250 pounds by the tenth year!  The tree doesn't require pruning, except to remove dead limbs and mature trees are even cold-tolerant with temperatures in the mid-20's!  In cold weather you can throw a tarp over the tree to protect it from the low temperatures and I've read about building a "soil bank" around the trunk of the tree from Thanksgiving until March.  You want to be real careful removing the soil in the Spring as the trunk will be real tender:

Image Credit

I've never tried this practice of building soil banks before, but it is one I'll explore if/when the cold weather gets here.  The soil forms a barrier that protects the tree from the cold and even if the entire tree is killed from the cold, the tree will re-sprout above the graft.  Many times I've lost a tree in the cold, only to have it re-sprout, but beneath the graft.  That's no good as the growth is from the root stock, not the productive fruit tree.  This practice of soil banking is supposed to be an effective tool and I'm going to employ it.

Removing competing grass around the base of the tree

Finally, This Article gave me some additional insight into caring for the tree. Grapefruit trees don't like competition from lawn grass, so you are supposed to keep a 1 foot circumference area around the tree free of grass. The trees don't like to be mulched as they'll get foot rot for which (unlike foot rot with our cows) there is no cure.  

Looking forward to Ruby Red Grapefruit from our own tree.  Like most things, though, I'm gonna have to be patient...

An Addition to our Citrus Grove

An old saying that I like to repeat goes something like this:

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.  The next best time is TODAY!"

So today I got busy and planted a tree.  Not just any tree, but a Ruby Red Grapefruit tree.  Slowly over the years, we've been planting different types of fruit trees.  So far (in addition to the Ruby Red Grapefruit), we have Satsuma, Tangerine, Navel Orange, peach and pear trees planted.  Our goal is to have a wide assortment of fruit trees that bear delicious fruit for us to consume and give away. The next trees we'd like to get in the ground are a lemon tree and a lime tree.  A blood orange tree would also be nice.

A friend of ours has a couple of Ruby Red Grapefruit trees planted on the south side of his barn and that keeps them protected from the north winds of winter.  He blesses us with bags of delicious grapefruit that we either cut in half and eat for breakfast or we add the juice to kombucha with a bit of grated ginger.  Talk about good!  We enjoy them so much, we thought we'd get a tree of our own. Here is the healthy little tree in a spot we picked out for it.

Here's an expanded view where you can see from left to right, a naval orange, a row of blueberry bushes, the Grapefruit tree, another row of blueberry bushes, and then a tangerine tree.  The spot where we are planting the grapefruit tree is an open spot that allows us a good view into the pasture to check on the animals.  That will be overgrown in a few years blocking the sightlines, so we'll have to either prune them or find another spot from which to view the pasture.  This was the only logical place though, since it is on the south side of the house in a protected area.  I was a little concerned about planting the different types of citrus so near one another, but learned that they are either pollinated by wind or bees and they won't cross pollinate.  In other words, your satsuma will always be a satsuma.  Your tangerine will always be a tangerine.

Our mini orchard

Ever wonder how the grapefruit got its name?  It tastes nothing like a grape.  Well, I learned that they grow in clusters and the clusters look like large yellow grapes. Growing up, I was never that crazy about eating grapefruit.  It was always kind of bitter tasting and the only way I could make them edible is to add teaspoons of sugar on top of them.  Well, my taste buds either outgrew that or the varieties have gotten much better, because these are so sweet, you'd never think about ever putting sugar on them.

We purchased the tree from a local nursery in town that Russ has worked at for several years.  The tree was originally grafted and grown at Saxon Becnel & Sons, a citrus grower from Belle Chasse, Louisiana.  Belle Chasse is way down south, below New Orleans, on the way to Venice, Louisiana. Their website says that they've been growing citrus for over 160 years.  That's pretty impressive.  I noticed that they also grow some trees in Texas, in a city not far from us appropriately named, Orange!

Ruby Red Grapefruit

So following the planting directions, we selected a high spot, dug the hole twice as big as the pot, loosened the soil beneath it, and placed the tree in the hole so that the top of the root ball was even with the level of the ground.  I sprinkled some chicken litter in the hole and watered it in good.

One downside about planting trees is that it creates one more obstacle to mow around or weed eat around, but I think the benefits of having great fruit produced right there at home outweighs any inconvenience.  You just have to be careful as you don't want the strings from your weed eater to hit the trunk of the tree as it could damage it.  I'll probably just mulch around them.

All done

One thing that I'm going to have to really learn how to do over the winter this year is pruning. Pruning has always intimidated me as I don't want to damage the tree and I don't know what I'm doing.  I've read that you want to prune the tree into a round shape and create something called scaffolding limbs and that you want to be sure to prune branches that touch the ground as that's where lots of the bug damage comes from.  I've got a lot of learning to do, but I'll put that on my to-do list.

In a few years, if all goes as planned, we'll be enjoying the fruit off of this Ruby Red Grapefruit tree.