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.