Citrus Tree Love

I’ve gone ahead and started a pineapple. I love those things :smiley:

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I got a short post in case anyone wants to grow a pineapple. You get them from the store for a couple of dollars and eat the fruit. Start at the bottom and strip off quite a few leaves to expose the root nodes. You have to cut the remaining fruit off the stem so it won’t rot. Then get a small bit of water in a glass and put it in there. In a couple of days the root nodes will start to grow. After the roots are really formed, I’ll plant it in a pot of soil. After that, it’s a house plant!
Oh I forgot to mention it’s a relative of the air plant, a bromeliad, so don’t get water in the leaves.

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Wow, so you’re also a tropical fruit grower? So am I. Haven’t heard that one thrown around in quite a while. My dad grew Solo many years ago on the Gulf coast of Texas. I grow, produce, 100’s of tropical fruits in a greenhouse. Started grafting in 2012, probably done about 500 grafts to make “cocktail” trees on mangos, citrus, annonas (cherimoya), and avocados. Also grow pitaya and pineapples. My Meyer lemon tree, small tree about 5’ H X 6’ W produced 226 BIG lemons this year, just excellent. My girlfriend and I juiced dozens of oranges this weekend to freeze in ice cube trays, etc., about 40#. Still have 100’s to go and they are blooming and flushing new growth. Bees are having a ball.

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WoW @OldUncleBen ! Those lemons look great! And the Blood Oranges…don’t think I’ve ever seen any with that deep of coloring! (Do they grow ‘true’ from seeds??? I’m sure I could find something around here to trade you! (I’ve got a pretty sizable nursery here!) Probably all a matter of what won’t get us busted by Ag!). Drop by my “First Time Growing…legally that is” thread sometime!

I’ve got 40 or 50 “Jungle Lemons” from seed of a very odd lemon growing all by itself in the deepest reaches of the World’s oldest continuously growing rain forest here in Thailand found on an anti-poaching forest survey a few years ago. None of us could figure out how the hell it got there in the first place! HUGE fruit, really juicy and not a spot of fungal blemish on the skin! (Unheard of over here in Asia, or at least my part!). Don’t know if they’ll come true to the parent but I figured there’s only one way to tell! Yeah, I worked on the ‘Solo Sunrise’ while farming on Kauai back in the early 1980’s, it was part of the U of H agriculture programs and they asked a number of us to grow them out for testing. An old friend from those days just visited me and dropped the seeds on me. I kinda doubt they’ll germinate but again, won’t know unless I try! (My general style of gardening/farming! :joy:)

DM me please, if you want to carry this conversation on!

:call_me_hand:

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Are you still doing your growing on the Gulf? I grew up in Bama and lived all around the Gulf of Mexico at some point. You have to be pretty far south to grow citrus don’t you? I remember the orange groves of south Florida when I was in boot camp in Orlando. Man, the orange blossoms filled the air with beautiful smells all day. I lived in south Texas once for a job and we had orange trees in the yard we rented.

Beautiful specimens of citrus you have!

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Burgundy coloring comes with long hang time and cold temps, just above freezing. This is Moro blood orange and yes it should grow true since it’s not a hybrid like the Meyer is.

…enough of the off topic stuff, been fun.

UB

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Am in central Texas now growing in a large greenhouse - 30’X36’ with an 18’ ridge. I have 2 huge vents on controllers/motors that open and close based on 6 cooling set points. Have 1,000’s of pollinators come and go in spring. It’s my man cave. Nothing like drinking a cold beer in my easy chair smelling the rich flowers, reading a good book. Bees make some mighty fine music too.

Avocado flower

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I was living in Midland, Tx before I moved here. I was just there for a few years after my sister’s husband passed away. It was hard to grow anything there, except Pecos Cantaloupes. The worse the soil and water the sweeter they become, ha… all of the water is alkaline and the soil isn’t much to write home about. But man, I grew some sweet Pecos Cantaloupes. Pot did good if you could keep it alive from over heated roots. The best I grew was in my compost pile at the back of the yard and it also had some shade from trees part of the day.

I love all latitudes. If I’m around the mountains I want to go back to the coast. If I’m living on the coast I want to go to the mountains… :man_facepalming:

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I’ve been wanting to grow a lemon tree really bad my whole life. Hearing that your getting so many lemons is definitely encouraging.

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Do so :grin:, when I came here there was an old one, the trunk was putrid and just one healthy branch. The trunk finally disappeared and from that lonely branch grew a new tree. A bit chaotic but gives good lemons … :yum:

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That is absolutely amazing! You wouldn’t be willing to trade some lemon seeds for some sugar kush seeds would ya? I shoulda probably just pmed you.

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Are lemon seeds legal in your country? frech|nullxnull Anything kush suits me :yum: but I can send them anyway, just PM me your addy. Found a pic about how it was (right), I suppose good genetics and huge roots system helped him to recover … beer3|nullxnull

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Looks like a lemon bush. Freakin awesome

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The bush is a tangerine tree, the small trunk with a single branch is the lemon tree … ejem|nullxnull

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Outta likes. That is so cool that that branch is just doin work.

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Are you in an area that gets hard freezes @George ?

Harvesting a lot of oranges I grafted like Cara Cara, Marrs, Valencia and Moro Blood oranges, most of them grafted to a key (Mexican) lime tree. I freeze the juice in ice cube trays which go into baggies and freeze the zest (OMG!). If you’re a baker omit the artificial flavoring and use the zest in lemon bars, cakes, etc.

I can turn a fruit white and bald within seconds using a microplaner. Tip - don’t scrape back and forth on the rind, you’ll get too much white pith. Hold the fruit between your thumb and middle finger and starting near your middle finger roll the fruit across until you finish at your thumb all in one pass/roll.

Mixed varieties on the right, pure blood orange on the left. I have 1 gallon baggies of this stuff dating back 3 years.

Uncle Ben

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Thanks for the tip, I have all year production so fresh zest available, I will try to dehydrate them, might be handy to add on meals … :yum:

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That’s a lemon? whoa… you should try your hand at growing pot! :rofl: :joy:

@OldUncleBen, I bet that blood Orange makes a nice drink!

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Yes it does. Juiced about 1.5 gals. of it last weekend! Just add tequila.

Makes a great marmalade too, just awesome on pancakes, toast.

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Guess you missed it, are you in an area that gets hard freezes @George ? Did the new growth come from near the ground, below the graft?

That looks like a Ponderosa lemon. My Meyers get that big. Girlfriend said she got just shy of a cup of juice from one!

Just curious mio,
UB

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