We’ve been in this house for almost two years now, and we love our orange and lemon trees! It’s so refreshing to be back in California and to be able to grow our own citrus. The orange tree is some navel variety, and the fruit is huge. By the size of the trunk, I’m guessing this tree is about 10 years old, but I don’t really have a good sense for how fast citrus trees grow. The previous owner had the house for 20 years, and she planted some sweet trees and shrubs (including some great camellias I wrote about last year).

When do they ripen?

Last year, I started sampling these oranges in January, roughly one a week, until they finally got sweet and ripe in March. This year, we pretty much knew to leave them alone until at least late February, and then we were just picking up the ones that fell on the ground (which still had some tartness to them in the first few weeks). One thing I like about oranges is that they just keep getting sweeter and don’t spoil while they’re on the tree. So, you can use the tree as your storage and just pick them when wanted over about a month. After a while, though, too many fall on the ground and go soft or moldy, and you realize you just need to pick the last of them. This was our last harvest for this year, and overall, we probably had about three times this many over the past 5-6 weeks.

We learned (from our pool guy… I know, it sounds so quintessentially California) that cold, frosty nights cause the sugars to concentrate in the oranges, and they get sweeter. I can’t completely vouch for that, because it might just be coincidence that most of our frosts happen in late January through February, when these are ripening anyway, but Google tells me that others say it’s true as well. :)

A long “gestation” period!

Another reason to harvest them all now is that the blossoms for next year’s fruit are already forming, and we think the tree could use the energy to put into a good crop of new blossoms. It’s actually a bit weird to think of how long the citrus gestation cycle is! Almost a year from blossom to harvest — how many other fruits take that long?

Lemons, and extending the time we get to enjoy them

The last pic above is from our lemon tree. Those start turning a nice yellow just as the red maple in the front yard turns bright — that shot was last November 22nd. But they’re not totally ready for another month or so after that. But then again, ripeness with lemons isn’t as crucial — they’re a sour fruit anyway, so they have a little more latitude with some early picking. This year, after giving away bags of them to neighbors and treating every visitor to our home with tasty lemon drinks, we still had too many on hand. My Sweetheart came up with a brilliant idea and froze lemon juice cubes with some ice cube trays. We still have a ziploc bag of lemon cubes in the freezer, and we just drop one in a glass of water for a nice, refreshing treat. She also sliced some up as wedges (with the skin still on) and froze those for using in drinks. Both are great ways to enjoy lemons for months after they’re all harvested.