Recently in Citrus Category

I posted last month about our citrus trees being in bloom slightly earlier than usual due to the weird weather. Well now a month has passed since the orange trees bloomed, the bees have moved onto the lemon and satsuma trees and the orange tree is left with hundreds of these:

Some of the teeny tiny oranges will grow into beauties but most will drop off from natural selection. These valencia oranges are really quite nice too, far superior to the store bought oranges you get! I am harvesting oranges, enough for one a day right now. Hopefully the grapefruit and navel oranges ripen soon!

The orange blossom is bringing in lots of garden visitors and no wonder 'cos it smells beautiful! Whenever I go out the back the tree is buzzing with life, literally! The bees LOVE the blooms!

The other insects that love the blossom are butterflies! Yep they are already flitting about here in Southern California and I see more each week! Plenty of blossom to chose from cos the tree is LOADED with flowers!

Of course the biggest lover of the blossom is this little one. Not sure what variety of humming bird it is but we get a couple zipping around the trees. I managed to snap this one during a 'blossom break'.

Love the wildlife in our garden!

I don't always take pics of the things I harvest from the garden, but I am trying this year to document more about the harvesting. I do weight the produce and plan to keep tallying that up each month, and am already half way to my goal for the year so I need to revise that goal I think! lol! Anyway here are some harvest pics from February starting with Collard Greens, oranges and Broccoli:

Next up are a couple of radish and some beet greens. It was the first time trying beet greens and they are YUMMY! Plus a 2 for 1 veggie in edible root and leaves so well worth it!

Next up is my mutant plant: Mustard Greens. This grew VERY well here! As did the collard greens. Both overtook there alloted area and thank heavens I finally got around to trying them. I like them both, but prefer the collards and beet greens I think.

February was a month of firsts for trying the veg, and I tried swiss chard. Pretty much like a lettuce only more substance to it. Definitely worth growing and I need to look into seeing how heat tolerant it is. I believe it does ok and should be good for salads in summer when we can't grow lettuce (though I am gonna attempt an experiment naturally, lol).

Notice the tomato! Yep I am harvesting tomatoes still! Not many, probably 1 or 2 a month from the remaining plant I had left. That was an experiment (and laziness on my part as I couldn't be bothered to remove the plant from the container). Plus the amazing thing is the plant flowered in Feb too!!! This was a surprising fact and definitely means I'll be overwintering a couple of tomato plants this year too! I will say they didn't taste as nice as summer toms but still better than store bought!

That about wraps up the harvest pics I think, I'll try to take more this month!

I mentioned that the weird hot/cold/wet weather had bought the citrus trees out in bloom early and I thought I'd share a few pics I snapped last week whilst working on the raised bed walkways. As you can see all the blossom is open and boy do we know it! The garden smells DEVINE right now!

The humming birds are visiting it  A LOT as they do every bloom but the amount of bees this year is astounding! Maybe I just didn't notice so much last year or maybe we really do have lots of bees this year. The buzzing on this particular morning was immense!

As you can tell one of my other passions is photography and gardening indulges that passion well! If only the hummingbirds would be so gracious as to stay in the same spot for more than 5 seconds!

Nice shots but finishing off with my favorite! Kinda glad we have all these bees busily buzzing around pollinating the flowers, cos that means MORE ORANGES! I am harvesting enough for approx 1 a day which isn't bad considering the rather crude pruning they got last year!

Naturally more photography to come as and when the critters and weather allow :) We get some interesting 'guests' to the YardCraft garden so should be good for some nature pics! When I was out snapping these some ducks flew past, annoying the life out of the dogs :) Makes a change from last year when they decided that the pool was their pond! Other than ducks we see a host of insects, reptiles, rodents, birds and of course our dogs, the 2 spotty monsters!!! Some days its a positive nature trail out there!

• 5oz Beet Greens
• 2oz Broccoli
  
• 2oz Chard
• 16oz  Collard Greens
• 14oz Mustard Greens
• 27oz Orange (Navel)
• 129oz Orange (Valencia)
• 6oz Peas
• 2oz Radish
• 1oz Tomato

• Orange (N) = 27oz @ 59c lb = 99c
  
• Orange (V) = 129oz @ 59c lb = $4.76
  
• Radish = 2oz @ 59c lb = 7c
  
• Tomato = 1 oz @ $1.99 lb =12c
• Collard greens = 16oz @ $2.99lb = $2.99
  
• Beet Greens = 5oz @  $6 lb = $1.87
  
• Broccoli = 6oz @ $3 lb = $1.12
• Chard = 2oz @ $6 lb = 75c
  
• Mustard Greens = 14oz @ $6 lb = $5.25
  
• Peas = 6oz @  $4 lb = $1.00

We are lucky to have 3 citrus trees on our property, and despite the neglect they received over the first 5 years we lived here, they continue to produce fruit. I try to prune, and shape, remove suckers and water sprouts. Last year the Navel orange tree got a severe pruning that shocked it a little but water sprouts and suckers were taking  over so I had to fight back. It's still a battle but I like to think I'm winning. They say to snap off the water sprouts as they appear and I'm trying! Making a mental note to check the trees weekly. Just seems to be the one tree that we're having an issue with, not sure why that is?

Right now all the trees are laden with fruit but also blossoming. I love the citrus blossom, the smell is divine and the hummingbirds love it so we get to them zipping about from flower to flower, aiding in the pollination and providing me with entertainment!  The blossoming seems a little early this year though, but that's probably the weird weather we've been having here in Southern California. Really warm January with little to no rain, and temperatures touching 80 degrees!  The start of February as I mentioned has been wet so I think the poor trees are pretty confused!

I'm harvesting oranges every few days right now. This means that smaller oranges on the tree will grow bigger, and the tree will put more energy into producing more oranges. Oh and the oranges taste great! I have one every morning with my breakfast and Bob takes some to work for lunch.

Can't wait till the grapefruit get big enough to eat :)