Harvesting Citrus

11/28/11

harvesting an orange

     We returned from our Thanksgiving vacation to find our grapefruit and orange trees ready to pick.  At least it looked like it.  We have been watching the fruit on them becoming more orange in the last month.  I know gardeners in California have bee harvesting their citrus for a month now.  Here the ripening schedule for grapefruit is mid-October through June, and for oranges it is mid-November through April.

Arizona Sweet Orange tree

     I have never grown citrus because I have never lived in a citrus growing climate until now.  The oranges on our tree are called Arizona Sweet.  I don't know the variety of grapefruit other than it is pink.  Many of the orange trees used as ornamental plantings on highway and curb medians are the Seville Sour Orange, which grows well here but are so sour they are not edible.  Citrus trees are evergreen and retain the majority of their leaves year round.  They can produce fruit for over 50 years.  And I discovered my orange and grapefruit trees have thorns!  Evidently younger trees produce more thorns.  I have read that there are thornless varieties, but not in my yard.

     Citrus should be fertilized three times a year.  But I have read that citrus can go for years without fertilizer and do well if correctly watered (17 gallons per week in mid-summer and 3 gallons per week in mid-winter).  I fertilized three times this year in hopes that the trees would grow better and produce more.  Nitrogen is low in the soil here and is the main fertilizer element needed.  The grapefruit tree has done the best with 27 grapefruits on it.  The orange tree has 10 oranges, and the lime tree did not produce any fruit this year because it was damaged by frost. 

pink grapefruit tree

      The sun can burn the tree leaves and bark.  Temperatures above 110F (43 C) may damage bark on young and old trees, leading to fungal infections.  It is recommended any exposed bark be painted with white latex paint.  Most of the citrus trees in neighboring yards have their exposed bark painted, and my husband painted our citrus tree trunks.  Salt concentration in the soil can be a problem here and can be reduced by heavy irrigation.  Citrus trees have no significant pests in Arizona.

bark painted with white latex paint

     We gave our oranges and grapefruit a taste test.  They were edible but not as sweet as we would like them.  So we will give the fruit another week or two on the tree before harvesting more.

first harvest - two grapefruit and an orange

Midsummer in the Garden

Zinnias

7/30/11
     It seems like it has been longer, but we are just halfway through our 120 days of over 100 degrees F (38C).  The vegetable garden with its lettuce, carrots, radishes, and spinach stopped producing two months ago.  I have a few chard plants straining to put forth a few small leaves.  I'll keep watering them in hopes they kick into normal production in the fall.  My pepper and two tomato plants never did recover from being wind burned.  They struggled but were unable to produce flowers before the real heat set in which did them in.

     The flower garden is blooming, but without a lot of plants it started out with.  As I posted before, all the cosmos died when it hit 118 F (48C).  The marigolds finally gave up this week.  And the two petunias I kept watering and watering said, "Enough" and quit flowering.  All the strawflowers died, and the weak blue cup,

zinnia flower

Marguerite daisy, blue dianthus and gazania are laboring to produce a flower or two.  They are shadows of their former bloom state and are essentially done for the summer.  The zinnias are the stars of the garden right now and are blooming profusely.   They have filled in a lot of the bare spots left from plants that died.  The celosia and vinca, two workhorse plants that bloom through the summer heat, are doing well in another part of the garden.

Celosia and Vinca

red celosia

white vinca

     Out in the yard, the oranges and grapefruits continue to slowly grow bigger.  We look forward to the fall harvest.  The lime tree produced no fruit this year, but since it lost half its leaves in the freeze last winter, it has grown new leaves on all the bare branches.  Maybe next year.  The flowering bushes (bougainvillea, yellow bells and oleander) are doing well, and going through bloom cycles as are the lantana scattered throughout the yard.  Many trees and plants don't struggle in the intense heat and sun here because of adaptations they have developed..  I'll talk about some of these adaptations in my next post.

grapefruit

lime tree this summer



lime tree after freeze







Transitioning to Summer

Diana Blueberry hybrid dianthus

5/31/11
     Our family is just back from 10 days of vacationing in our home state of Virginia.  How green it was!  How delightful it was to see rain and hear so many songbirds.  I miss all that now that we are living in the desert.  While gone, changes occurred in both my vegetable and flower gardens.

     As we move into the triple-digit heat of summer here, my vegetable garden is all but done.  The lettuces are gone, as well as the spinach, carrots and radishes.  I still have some red chard hanging on.  My one pepper plant never recovered from being wind burned.  It died while I was away.  I have 2 tomato plants left, but one is not looking good.  We've had 40 mile-per-hour winds for two days, which has damaged the plant beyond recovery, I fear.

White Wedding zinnia

     Out of the row of blue dianthus seeds I planted in the flower garden, one plant emerged and blossomed while I was away.  The white wedding zinnias bloomed while I was gone, as well as the hybrid mixed zinnias.  The pansies and petunias are almost all gone, and soon the strawflowers and gazania will die off in the daily triple-digit heat.  Next weekend I will buy the few summer flowering plants that can survive the heat and start digging them in.

Border
Beauty hybrid mixed zinnias

     As I took a walk around the yard a day after returning, I noticed that the orange tree had 7 small, green oranges on it, and the red grapefruit tree had 26 green grapefruit!  So it looks like we will have some citrus.  The lime tree had no fruit that I could find.  It sustained the most damage from the freezes this past winter, but all of its branches have new green leaves.

red grapefruit