It is the citrus season!
 

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.

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/pics/pomelo_2017_01.jpg

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/pics/pomelo_2017_02.jpg

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Hopefully the cold nights coming in this weekend won't damage them any.

that is YUGE!!

What is it?

It's a HIRADO BUTAN PUMMELO (or Pomelo depending on who is spelling it)

http://www.justfruitsandexotics.com/...-pummelo-tree/

I was thinking a grapefruit a hippo sat on. I guess they can take colder weather.

Better get the heaters ready for next week.

Yeah, forecast lows a few nights into the high twenties.

Looks like 2018 is going to be coming in all cold and unpleasant. :(

They keep changing the temps long range. They were talking snow around here next week.

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.

They did a much better job in the 70's before computers took over and when our weather was more normal.

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:

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.

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!

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.

Too bad you can't find some old heaters from some old groves.

It started out at 62 at 530 am and it is 45 now.

Connie and I just got back in from laying out the sheets and tarps where we are going to be covering citrus in a little bit. Things should go quicker this way. Kind of windy, so I hope that dies down a bit and doesn't just blow the tarps off.

Going to be a rough week with the temps, it seems. But at least the daytime temps are going to be coming up out of freezing, so that should help a bit.

43f here now. I don't see anything getting below 34 for my area. Greening sickness took care of every citrus tree in my hood starting back in 05. I had the best oranges and it started to die from the top down in 05 and every other tree in the hood is long gone. I tried to grow another tree in 08 and it died. So i am done with citrus.

I'm hoping we can avoid that disease on our citrus. Probably the safest thing for us to do would be to consider our trees a closed system and just not buy anything else that could bring in a problem. I think after this, we are leaning in that direction anyway. Pretty much ties us down in the winter months because we have to hang around here in case there is a cold snap like this that we would need to be available to cover some stuff. We even through a tarp over the water pump tank this time, which we have never done in the past.

But if the "global warming" starts bringing in cold spells like this every year, might just be a moot issue.

We just got back in from covering the trees we had tarps for. Probably should run by Harbor Freight and buy a few more, but quite likely they are sold out locally anyway. We could have used one more for one of the small satsumas, but they are supposed to be really cold hardy, so one of the three is going to be an involuntary test case this week, I guess.

Temp is 40 degrees on our front porch right now. After Connie and I take showers, I will be running out to drip the pipes before the temp drops below freezing.

I am DEFINITELY hoping the weather goombas are WAY wrong on the forecast on the low temps. But hoping it will be warmer than predicted, of course, not the other way.

BTW, one interesting way I have discovered to determine that a cold night is heading our way is that spiders will start dropping out of the trees to get close to the ground. Somehow they know... At times in the past it looked surreal with all these spider lines glinting in the exterior lights off of the building late at night.

30 degrees out on the porch right now. So maybe those temps in the 20s will be short lived before the sun comes up and starts warming things up.

Guess you got ice or snow now.

Freezing rain and 29 degrees. My windshield iced over several times early this morning on the interstate.

Yeah, when I woke up this morning, there was quite a bit of what looked like sleet over everything outside. And hours later when we uncovered a few of the trees, the tarps had a lot of slush on them. But temps only dropped down to around 31 degrees, so there was a good side to the cloudiness and precipitation.

Supposed to get colder the next few nights.

I'll be glad when this first week of 2018 is over and done with. So far the year has been pretty crappy, weatherwise.

Never got below 35 here.

I think the lowest we got was Thursday night when one of the thermometers showed 24 degrees. The other monitoring thermometer I have outside showed 26 degrees. I found a page that shows temperatures from other people right around the neighborhood, and their lows were showing in the upper teens. They are virtually right down the street, so I'm not sure why such a drastic difference.

We uncovered the trees today and will folding up the tarps to put them away. The citrus trees don't look too bad that we didn't cover up, but not sure how much leaf fall we are going to have on the Meyer lemon trees.

Supposed to bet down to around 32 degrees again next Sunday, but that is far enough away that there isn't a chance in hell that the weather service will be accurate within 5 degrees or more.

Damn! Looks like another round of cold nights coming this week. Starting Saturday and continuing thru Thursday night. Of course, this changes every time I look at it, with the cold nights becoming extended further into the week each time.

So we'll be covering the younger citrus trees again.

You may get even a colder shot later this coming week. I don't think this cold pattern will last much longer and we will stuck into a flat, warm and dry pattern.

Looks like Wednesday night will be the coldest night in this series. Looking at the latest forecasts, anyway. Maybe 23 to 24 degrees.

Maybe people need to cut out this crap with trying to stop global warming.

Looks like Connie has got quite a meal on her hands! Just one of those sections from her pomelo is larger than the entire tangerine I eat at breakfast. It takes her about a week to eat the entire thing.

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/pics/pomelo_2017_08.jpg

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/pics/pomelo_2017_09.jpg

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/pics/pomelo_2017_10.jpg

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/pics/pomelo_2017_11.jpg

Never seen anything that big.

Arrghh, the National Weather Forecast is predicting a low of 18 degrees here on Wednesday night. :ack2:

Gonna really warm up after this blast. Maybe get to around 34 for my area.

28 here and got some of my plants.

I've got three temperature sensors at the same spot on the front porch. They show a low temperature last night of 24, 23.5 and 21.9 respectively. No idea which one is the more accurate of the three, but for certain, it was COLD last night.

I guess it should come as no surprise that anything related to the weather seldom has any sort of accuracy component embedded. The forecast for the low tonight, depending on whose forecast I look at, states 21 or 26 degrees. I guess if I have to, I'll take the 26 degrees, thank you. That has changed probably two dozen times over the several days I've been monitoring their predictions.

It is still only 44 degrees outside, and not likely to get much warmer.

You know, 2018 sure doesn't have a lot in the positive sense to say about it yet. At least as far as the weather is concerned.

What do I need to do in order to help get that "global warming" back on track?