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!
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