Picking the Low Hanging Fruit

We had a big freeze a couple of years ago that really hurt our citrus trees.  In fact, I thought they all perished.  But they came back.  Although we got zero fruit last year, this year they bloomed and produced fruit again - not as much as before the big freeze, but fruit nonetheless.

However, the weather forecast showed a big chill moving in.  The wind is howling outside as I type this.  The temps were in the 50's today.  Right now it is 34 and by morning it will be 19.  No telling what the wind chill will be.  One of the things on the list today was doing a better job of protecting the citrus trees in advance of the freeze.  I didn't wrap them last freeze.  I did my best to get a tarp over them.  I also, as you can see below, piled wood chip mulch high around the trunk, well above the graft.  Next task was to pick the fruit and then cover with a tarp.  

This is a grapefruit tree - a small one.  It has four grapefruit on it.  Because of its size, it was an easy one to wrap in a tarp.  I tied the tarp on tight as the winds were gusting 40 mph all night.

While I could stand on the ground and pick the grapefruit, the tangerines were a different story.  I had to get the ladder out for the rest of the citrus - 2 tangerines and 1 navel orange tree.  First, I (literally) picked all the low hanging fruit.  You can see that I picked everything that was easy.  Many people use the phrase "picking the low hanging fruit" as a description of doing the easy things first.  That's exactly what I did. 

Then I got on a ladder and hung a 5 gallon bucket on the ladder where a paint bucket normally would hang if I was painting.  I picked every single tangerine off of the tree.

Tangerines are such a beautiful color, so orange it's almost fluorescent.  They are so tasty, sweet and tart.  Once I picked all of them off of the tree, I moved to the second tangerine tree and picked it clean.

Finally, I moved to the navel orange tree.  There was a lot of big fruit on this tree.  As I was picking, I saw a wasp nest as big around as a softball.  It was cold, so they were all gone, fortunately.                       

Most of the fruit is baseball-sized, but about a third of them are the size of softballs.  We like to cut these in wedges and eat them chilled.  We'll also make fresh-squeezed orange juice.  So good.

We picked three buckets of tangerines and four buckets of navel oranges.  We brought these inside and then I went back out and did the best job I could of protecting the trees with a tarp.  Hopefully, I'll be able to save them!

Then we went over to the neighbors and picked 2 five gallon buckets of satsumas.  We wanted to get them all off before the freeze.  We'll let you know if our mulching and tarping of the citrus trees was able to save them.  I hope we're successful.  We do love our citrus.

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!

Juicy Fruit! It is Citrus Time

This is the time of year around here in South Louisiana when the weather gets chilly, leaves fall from the hardwoods, the humidity drops, mosquitoes are (almost) non-existent, and our citrus trees' limbs are burdened down with a heavy load of fruit.  The bright, almost fluorescent orange color contrasted against the green leaves and blue sky brings a smile to my face.

Our citrus crop this year, while good, is not great.  It is not near the crop of last year.  I attribute this to the two hurricanes blowing a lot of fruit off the trees.  It's okay.  We still have plenty.

We like to eat them, but we also like to drink them!  Tricia and I picked a basket of tangerines from one of the trees in the back yard.  Normally we put them in a bucket, but Tricia likes to fill a basket with them.  Tangerines are tangy.  They are about the size of a tennis ball.

We then went out to our navel orange tree.  The navels aren't quite as orange in color as the tangerines.  They are bigger, though, and are softball-sized.  They hang in clusters from the tree.  We have to support the limbs so they don't break.  Some of these inevitably fall off, hit the ground and get soft spots.  We don't let them go to waste.  The cows see us by the trees and come a running.  I'll take out my pocketknife, cut them in half and feed them to the happy bovines.  They LOVE citrus!

It doesn't take long to fill a basket with these oranges.  It is like picking a basket of sunshine.

Today we'll make juice.  We bring them in, chilled from the weather and slice them in half.  Using an old-fashioned juicer, we squeeze out the juice and then pour the juice and pulp through a strainer.

In no time at all, we've squeezed a half gallon of fresh orange/tangerine juice.  So sweet and tart and delicious!!  We set it on the window sill as it is not only satisfying to the taste buds, but it is a beautiful sight to look at, too.

One last thing, we learned this trick from my sister and my mom.  We took the leftover oranges and tangerines that we had squeezed most of the juice out of and put them in a pot with some water.  We went out and picked some fresh rosemary and added cloves and cinnamon and heated it up on the stove.

The fragrance was divine!

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!

The Last Days of Citrus

We had a bumper crop of citrus this year.  Since late November we have been eating tangerines.  Just last week we ate the last of them.  Not to fear.  We've plenty of navel oranges.  Big, juicy, navel oranges.  We ate a lot of tangerines this year, but we also made tangerine juice.  Last year we froze a bunch of it, but this year we didn't have much space in our freezer.  We drank all of the juice fresh.  The tangerine juice is tart and sweet!  Delicious.  The color of the tangerines and the juice itself is beautiful.

Sunday turned out to be one of the most beautiful days of the year.  As we walked around outside and observed spring taking place before our eyes, I noticed something on the navel orange trees:

The orange trees are about to burst forth with blooms!  But there is still fruit on the trees! 

In addition to the multitude of flowers on the trees that are about to open, you can see the bright, new leaf growth on the trees:

Now, I think that with the tree putting energy toward blooms and the setting of NEW fruit, as well as the tree putting out new leaves, it is high time to pick the remaining fruit off the tree and put it in the fridge.  Naturally, we had already picked all the low hanging fruit.  The remaining navel oranges were at the very top of the tree and required me getting a ladder and climbing to the top.  As I would pick the softball-sized fruit from the trees, I would toss them down and Russ and Tricia would catch them and put what would fit into a five gallon bucket.

This is the last of the fruit from our trees from last year's harvest.  It has lasted us 3 whole months.  The 2019 crop is about to set on the trees once they finish blooming.  We'll look forward to enjoying delicious citrus again from our trees in about 9 months.

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!

Too Much of A Good Thing

Saturday morning after milking I like to walk around the pasture and the yard just observing things. I'll pick up a few fallen branches, fill all the water troughs with water and just give everything a close inspection.  I walked past the navel orange tree and noted that the tree was heavy with fruit.  I mean the limbs were drooping so much with the weight of the fruit, I was concerned about the health of the tree. More on that in a minute.

Notice the right side of the tree

Softball-sized fruit adorned the orange tree almost like ornaments on a Christmas tree.  We love our citrus trees.  My favorite is making freshly squeezed orange juice. Minute Maid just can't even come close to comparing with this OJ.  As I stood by the tree I thought about standing in this same location this spring.  It was cool and I was inhaling deeply as I smelled the fragrant orange blossoms.  Many of those blossoms are now the fruit you see hanging in the photo below.

A Heavy Load

The morning sun was streaming in from the east and I apologize for the poor quality of the photos today.  Believe me, the rays of the sun were beautiful in person.  Not so much in a photograph.  Anyway, if you look below, you can see something that looks out of place and not right about the tree.  The branches on the right side of the tree are leaning.  In fact some of the oranges were touching the ground and with all the rain, they had burst open and had grey mold growing on it. Other oranges had a blue-green mold growing.  What is that?  Well, you might remember from science class a gentleman by the name of Alexander Fleming who grew those molds and discovered Penicillin. That's great, I guess, that we have penicillin growing in the back yard, but I'm allergic to it.  

I wondered why this was occurring and leaned inside the canopy of the navel orange tree to get a closer look.  Here is what I saw:

Darn it!  A broken limb.  Not only this one, but two more in addition.  I went inside and asked Tricia if we had any strong wind.  Negative ghost rider.  So what caused it.  Well, I'm no arborist by any means, but here is my theory.  Either one or both of these events may be causing this:  With all the rain we have had, the wet leaves added extra weight to the already heavily laden limbs, causing breakage.  Also if you grow tomatoes, you know that after a rain, the tomatoes will grow so fast, they split their skins.  Perhaps all the torrential rain caused the oranges to grow too fast and get too heavy for the limbs to support the added weight.

If you look at the pictures, the leaves are still green.  In the photo immediately above, you can see that about half of the limb is still intact, allowing nutrients to continue flowing to the outer limb, even though only it's only through 50% of the limb.  I liken that to someone who has a blockage in an artery.  They can still function, but not at full capacity and the situation should be rectified as soon as possible.

So here's my plan.  In an attempt to save the oranges, I'm going to cut a "V" shaped notch into one end of some 2 x 4's  and prop the broken limbs back up.  This will give some support to them and to keep the limbs from breaking off completely.  I'm not sure if it will salvage the broken branch.  Will it grow back together?  I'm not sure.  Our live oak tree did.  It's a little extra work to have to do this, but the benefit of enjoying a fresh squeezed glas of orange juice this winter is well worth it.

Picking the Very Last of the Navel Oranges

This year was an excellent year for citrus.  We've picked every last tangerine off our our trees and just the other day I went out and picked the final bucketful of navel oranges off of the top of the tree. I pick the low hanging fruit first, because it is convenient, but after you've eaten everything else, then I start picking the hard to reach fruit at the top of the tree.

We've eaten plenty of them by just cutting them up and snacking on them.  We've juiced many of them and have enjoyed drinking fresh squeezed orange juice - it is so much better than store-bought OJ.  Tricia has flavored our kombucha with some of the juice and IN THIS POST we show a delicious option for using our oranges. I'm telling you, it is the best cake.

The last oranges at the top of the tree

After I had picked them all, I made another pass around the tree just to make sure that I wasn't leaving any behind.  Lo and behold there was another one hiding behind some leaves in the middle of the tree - can't leave any behind.

Hide & Seek Orange

Navel Oranges get their name from the 'belly-button' looking object on the opposite end than the stem.  THIS LINK explains how the navel orange came about.  It is an interesting story and I'll post a little bit:

"That appearance of a navel on the orange is the result of a mutation," Moses says. The mutation created a conjoined twin — an aborted second orange at the opposite end from the stem. "Looks like a human navel," Moses says, but "it's in fact a small, second orange."

And the mutation that started it all? A single branch on a sour orange tree in the garden of a monastery in Brazil.

A Presbyterian missionary came upon it in the mid-1800s. It intrigued him that not only did the orange have a bellybutton and baby orange inside — it was sweet, and had no seeds.

He made a cutting, propagated some little trees, and sent them to William Saunders at the USDA in Washington.

"Because the navel orange through that mutation is seedless," Moses says, "all of the navel oranges that we see today and we eat today are genetically identical with the original orange."

That's right. The produce aisle is filled with clones of that one mutation from Bahia, Brazil.

The Last bucket of oranges 

So once I picked the last of the fruit, my son Russ, a horticulture major at LSU, taught me what he knows about pruning the tree.  We cut some branches off of the tree according to his pruning technique.  It will keep fruit from dragging on the ground when the orange-laden limbs are bent over. We fed the leaves to the cows and goat and they ate every green leaf off of it.

It won't be much longer before all the trees begin to bloom and the evening air is filled with one of the most fragrant aromas on God's green earth - orange blossoms!