Oranges....

We have several types of citrus trees on the back third of the property. We purchased the house with five full grown trees: 1 mandarin (we call cuties), 1 navel orange, 1 bearss lime, 1 lemon and 1 other orange tree that never really survived after a year. The last orange was bitter and no one really cared for it, and then one day we noticed that it had died. Not really sure what happened with it. But in the meantime we were planting more trees and (kumquat, rio red grapefruit, yosemite orange and a honey mandarin). We love the citrus trees!

Our trees bloom at different times of the year and start the cycle of growth and it is beautiful to watch. There are tons of flowers that bring in the bees to pollinate. The little buds start to grow and they grow! The mandarin (I think its a mandarin) tree that came with the house overflows with fruit every year around Jan/Feb. We start picking them in December and are still picking in February/March. It's wonderful! Sometimes we get outside and pick a bunch of oranges and juice them for later. We simply put the juice in pint jars and freeze.

When our mandarin tree is empty of fruit we move on to the next tree and sometimes the fruits are ready simultaneously. The mandarin are so sweet and juicy, the peel just falls off when you start peeling. But as you can see in the picture below it is not empty yet!

Our goal is to have our trees bearing fruit year-round. We started with 9 trees and now have over 25, including peach, plum, apricot, nectarine, apple and cherry. I'll have to write about them when they are bearing fruit. Being able to go outside and pick fruit for your family for the next few days or while you are just working around the yard and want a quick pick-me-up is fabulous. We always have some type of fruit!

Thanks for stopping in!