• Got the Contributing Memberships stuff finally worked out and made up a thread as a sort of "How-To" to help people figure out how to participate. So if you need help figuring it out, here's the thread you need to take a look at -> http://www.corvetteflorida.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3581 Thank you, everyone! Rich Z.

It is the citrus season!

Rich Z

Rich Z

Internet Sanitation Engineer
Staff member
Connie and I look forward to this time of year because of our citrus finally ripening. One of the real joys of being here in Florida is to be able to grow this stuff, and just take a walk outside, pluck a few tangerines off of a tree, and eat them while walking around the property. And the really cool thing is that we now have quite a few trees growing around the property that resulted from just spitting those seeds out onto the ground randomly. Matter of fact, the third picture in this series is of a tree that grew from a seed spit out some 20 odd years ago. So the seeds being spread around now will create a third generation of them. These are Changshi (or Changsha) which is a type of Satsuma, I believe, and they grow true from seed.

Not all of the citrus has ripened yet, as we have several locations and they all seem to ripen at different times. Which is great, because that spreads the "eating" season out over a much longer period of time.

Now with any luck, we won't have a hard freeze come through and wipe out all the fruit, or have a bear discover how tasty they are and destroy the trees getting to them.

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The large fruits in the first two pics are of Connie's Pomelo tree. She has 10 fruits this year. We bought that tree and a Dancy tangerine a long while back and just set the pots between two buildings planning on finding a spot to plant them when we had time. Well, they stay there a LOT longer than we had planned, and I guess they are there for good now. The spot happens to be pretty protected, which allows the Pomelo to do so well, I guess. Connie is ecstatic about getting as many fruits as she has this year. It takes her about a week to eat just one of them, though. They are REALLY big! They should be ready to eat in about three weeks or so, if last year was any guide.
 
I don't know how they grow that far north. They all died in my area from greening sickness. Plus all the super freezes in the 80's wiped them out north of Tampa. I guess as warm as it has been the last 20+ years they will be growing in south GA soon.
 
Well, I guess it is the warm spell we are in that is helping us be successful with the citrus. The Meyer's lemons Connie is growing as well as the Pomelo as not as cold hardy as the Satsumas and the Changshas, and you can tell they get a little bit of damage during the nights that drop down into the 20s. Year before last we had a sudden cold snap around this time of year that pretty much destroyed most of the nearly ripened citrus. We still have some young (small) trees that we would likely need to cover during a night below 25 degrees to keep them from suffering a lot of damage. But the older and larger trees should be able to weather below freezing temps pretty well with only some minor leaf damage.

This Spring we had a cold snap while a lot of the citrus was blooming, and that definitely kicked things back on us. It's those sudden cold snaps either too early in the Fall or later than normal in Spring that can be a real problem.

Of course, some of the apple trees and a pear tree have put out flowers recently, so no idea what time of year they think it might be right now. Plants seem to be just as confused about the weather patterns as we are.

Fortunately we haven't seen any problems with that "greening sickness". We have noticed that the citrus we see in the grocery stores has been pretty puny looking ever since last year. Our tangerines have been at least three times as large as the ones in the stores, and Connie's Myer lemons put any lemons we have seen in grocery stores to shame. So hopefully we are isolated enough that such plant ailments won't find us.
 
I had the best Oranges and then around 2005 the tree started to die from the top down. Then all the other tree's in my hood have died off as well. At least yours look good and strong. We are super dry again just like last fall.
 
Yeah, been pretty dry here as well. We got a brief but strong rain shower early AM this morning, but didn't amount to a whole lot. I've been watering the citrus so that the fruits will not begin to lose weight and stay nice and juicy.
 
This isn't the largest one on the tree, but Connie wanted to pull one to see if it is ripe yet. She said it tastes pretty good, but just a bit shy of being fully ripe.

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Hopefully the cold nights coming in this weekend won't damage them any.
 
Yeah, forecast lows a few nights into the high twenties.

Looks like 2018 is going to be coming in all cold and unpleasant. :(
 
Heck, the weather people can't even get the forecast right just a few hours in advance. Earlier today they were calling for a low of 35. Then they changed it to 37 degrees when I looked right before sunset. I figured we would be OK with not covering the new citrus trees tonight. So around 11 or so, we see the temp suddenly drop from 35 to 37. Went and checked the forecast and they changed the forecast at this late hour to a low of 32 degrees, with frost after 2am. So Connie and I got the warm clothes on and broke the tarps out of the shed and covered the sensitive stuff.

Bunch of bozos. The national weather service needs to fire every one of those clowns. A crew of volunteers could not do any worse at the job.
 
Damn, going to be some cold nights coming up for this entire week. Tonight won't be too bad, but Monday night through maybe Saturday they are calling for lows around the mid 20s around here. :dead:
 
Rich Z said:
Damn, going to be some cold nights coming up for this entire week. Tonight won't be too bad, but Monday night through maybe Saturday they are calling for lows around the mid 20s around here. :dead:
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They keep changing my lows from mid 40's to mid 30's day after day. I have not seen a temp below 32 since 2010. Coconut palms are growing more and more north.
 
Rich Z said:
Damn, going to be some cold nights coming up for this entire week. Tonight won't be too bad, but Monday night through maybe Saturday they are calling for lows around the mid 20s around here. :dead:
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That's the way it was when I was a kid growing up here in the 50's, 60's and 70's! Must be the Global Warming!
 
85vette said:
That's the way it was when I was a kid growing up here in the 50's, 60's and 70's! Must be the Global Warming!
Click to expand...

Yeah. I'm betting the next "global threat" is going to be a coming catastrophic ice age. Just like the song they were singing back in the 70s.

Oh no! We were wrong! The nasty CO2 problem is BLOCKING heat from reaching the Earth! We have to tax and control everyone even more so we can save the planet!
 
Still only 41 degrees here at 1:15pm. :(

Supposed to drop down to around 23 degrees tonight, and pretty much the same for this entire week.

Well, our citrus trees might be history in 2018. We are going to cover what we can with whatever tarps we have. But I think it's going to be windy too, so that might wind up blowing the tarps off of the trees anyway.

Oh well. Growing our own citrus was nice while it lasted. We won't be replacing the trees, since this sort of thing could happen again at any time. And honestly, we're getting up in age where running around at night throwing tarps over trees would be becoming a burden anyway.
 
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