Storm clouds are on the horizon for this Oscar's Sunday here in Southern California. While the rich and beautiful crowd undoubtedly have some poor production assistant to hold an umbrella over their freshly coiffed head, I have no such assistance so I'd better get what little gardening I have to do done.
I should also turn off the sprinkler timers until drier weather arrives to save on our precious water in this dry region.
I'm trying to fix my poor citrus production dilemma. My three-tree citrus grove just doesn't produce the way I want it to. I get hundreds, may thousands, of very fragrant blossoms each year but just a few fruit from each tree.
When I say few, I mean hardly any...two from the cara cara orange; three tangelos; and about ten Meyer lemons.
During the blooming period, I rarely see bees on the plants. You'd think such fragrant flowers would really attract the little honeymakers.
One place I do see them...tons of them, actually...is on the lavender plants. Last summer, our backyard lavender plant died so this year, I need to replace it.
I bought two small plants like this a Lowe's.
I dig an appropriately sized hole, knock the plastic pot off, and just stick it in the ground. I planted a lavender between each citrus tree to attract the bees and, hopefully, they will notice the nice looking plants next door and go looking to do a little pollinating, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
Dirt tamped down and plants watered in, we'll keep our fingers crossed for a better citrus crop this year.
DarrylCopyright 2015 - Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved
I love citrus, especially those of the orange variety. There's almost no dessert that can compare with a perfectly ripe orange, picked from the tree, and eaten on the spot. No soda can compare with the lemonade you make with the fruit you just harvested from the tree. A cocktail just isn't a cocktail to me without a squeeze of fresh lime in it.
Our house resides in a former lemon grove. All traces of that farm are long gone, although some of our neighbors still harvest and sell their oranges.
While I don't get the quantity of fruit I'd like, the quality is sure there.
We have three trees...a navel orange, a tangelo that I rescued from a trash pile, and a Meyer lemon. All three are dwarf trees.
I definitely have my idea of what a perfect fruit from each tree will be...
On the orange, it has to be round. Like a globe, not oblong like an egg. The navel has to be small...almost non-existent (this gives you a bonus of a large, interior navel made exclusively of tasty, juicy pulp). The skin should be rather thick to make peeling easy, I like to peel and eat the sections more than I like to cut it up into pieces with a knife. The color should be a dark orange, signifying that it has absorbed all the UV the sun could pour on in and converted that into life-giving ascorbic acid.
The orange at the top of this post looks like it meets most of these qualifications, I think I'll pick it today.
A tangelo should also be dark orange for the same reasons. They're easy to peel naturally, so the skin doesn't have to be as thick but it helps to have a large head of rind on the top. Now, you pop that off like the pin of a hand grenade and strip of from top to bottom.
This last fruit from this year's crop meets that criteria. It's coming off today too.
The Meyer lemon needs only to be a deep yellow. It's naturally sweeter than most lemons. I don't have a use for it this week, so I'll leave them on the tree a couple of more days before we take them off and make lemonade or maybe lemon cake.
Mmmm....cake...
DarrylCopyright 2014 - Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved
It's Christmas time and that means another harvest should be ready. Let me check, yep, we've got produce.
The big stars of the wintertime here are citrus, like that tangelo at the top of the post. Juicy, sweet, yet tart, it provides a tasty dose of Vitamin C to help us with those wintertime bugs.
The Cara Cara navel orange is even tastier, not quite so tart.
While my summer harvest of tomatoes was a dud, winter is providing a nice batch. I made fried green tomato omelets with this one.
It looks like an apple but these are actually guavas. We've got hundreds of them.
And here's this weeks harvest...oranges, tangelos, Myer lemons, tomatoes, guavas, and a small bell pepper in with our hot chile plant.
Have a great Christmas and New Year!
DarrylCopyright 2013 - Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved
Our little citrus grove...three whole trees, dwarfs at that...is starting to bloom. Above, you can peer into the first little Cara Cara navel orange flower to open.
The fragrances we're about to experience truly need to be experienced to be believed. Nothing smells so sweet as a citrus tree in bloom.
We'll also be inundated with honey bees but that's OK, I don't bother them and they don't bother me.
Our Cara Cara can be a diva. Last year we got sixteen fruit. I really want to get much more, so I've been following some of my fellow garden bloggers, especially those that grow citrus, and hope to do much better.
The tangelo is a rescue that someone was ripping out of the ground and I've been performing gardening CPR on it for the last two seasons. It's gradually coming back and giving us some fruit again.
Our Meyer lemon is also giving us more and more fruit each year, even though it's a misshapen mess. Once it's well established, I'd like to prune it into a better shape.
I'm going to try to fertilize each two weeks and not get too lazy about that, keep the water flowing, and try not to shock the trees too much which ends up splitting the fruit.
One other thing you need to look out for is chlorosis...a lack of chlorophyll caused by an iron deficiency. You can tell when your trees have it because your leaves turn yellow and have a spider vein effect, like you see above.
Easy cure...get some soluble iron, like Ironite. Fill a small container (like the fabric softener lid above) with the iron pellets.
Sprinkle a little around the bottom of each plant.
Once on the ground, the water will leach the iron slowly into the soil to be absorbed by the plant, giving it the iron it is short of. I'll treat my trees on average twice a year.
It'll be a fragrant few weeks and then, some months from now, we're looking forward to some really sweet fruit.
DarrylCopyright 2013 - Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved.
It never rains in Southern California, a big 70's rock song says, so I don't know what this wet stuff is falling on my head. I kid...but we've got a 6-day stretch of rain this weekend that's keeping me from the garden.
In between squalls, I was able to go out and take a picture of our fabulous fall rose bloom in the front yard garden against the Christmas decorations at the top. Below is another, more rose centric, picture of the same spot.
In other news, I was able to start harvesting our winter fruit from our tiny little citrus grove (three trees).
Across the top of the bowl, from left to right, a cara cara navel orange, a tangelo, and a Meyer lemon. Cut open in front is another cara cara, displaying the very tasty red flesh it's famous for.
DarrylCopyright 2012 - Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved.
Fall weather has finally arrived here in Southern California which means there's just a hint of cool in the very dry air. The leaves are turning brown (no color here) and they'll soon drop.
Winter's arrival means that citrus season is here. At the top of this post is a little bit of our harvest from last year, cara cara navel oranges and Meyer lemons.This is our "citrus grove," consisting of three dwarf citrus trees...
...the Meyer lemon...
...the cara cara navel...
...and this rescue of a tangelo that was near death when I got it last year and nursed it back to health.
I get a few fruit each year but nothing like friends and family that have old trees in their yards that they don't even pay attention to and, yet, get hundreds of fruit that end up rotting on the ground.
I try to ignore mine and get even less fruit. The leaves shrivel and get mottled, so I treat 'em well, they look better, and I get a few fruit but not much.
Still trying to figure this citrus thing out. I fertilize every two weeks, water regularly, and treat with ironite once a year and the harvest doesn't change much.
Hmm...one of these days.
DarrylCopyright 2012 - Darryl MusickAll Rights Reserved
