We planted an orange tree (we bought it from Home Depot) It was Washington Navel Orange. (4 years back) It gave 4-5 fruits for the first time this year. We were expecting it to be sweet and easy to peel navel oranges, but they turned out to be round orange(difficult to peel-- skin does not come out easily)
Does it not depend on what type of tree we plant? Is it depending on what kind of pollination happened? (from which tree it was pollinated?) thanks for any info!
The pollination is irrelavent. Citrus is apomictic, which means it will even set fruit and even form viable seed without any pollination at all.
The quality of the fuit depends more on nutrients and weather.
Be sure the fruiting branches are indeed from above the graft. The rootstock might produce oranges, too; but they will tend to be sour, seedy, and tight-skinned. If you have any branches from below the graft and also some from above the graft, remove those below. If you have only branches below the graft, return the plant to Home Depot.
Might not be a Navel. Is there a navel at the blossom end of the fruit? Was there an ID label on the pot? HD (and others) often have citrus where the ID tag on the plant differs from the label on the pot.
Olin
g'day,
no absolute expert on citrus but as we manage to get good sweet fruits off of all of ours, i'm also going with growing conditions, could need some ph adjustment as well as a boost of nutrient around the drip line use any sort of manure, and heavily mulch with green type hay mulches even sugar cane mulch.
and like a lot of citrus they do like a cold spell over the fruit as it matures, those that get frost over them are the sweetest, but you can still get good fruit with more attention to nutrition.
they will also like a good deep watering at least once a month.
i would suggest a layer of manure from say 8"s out from the trunk to just beyond the drip line, then cover that with mushroom compost app'
4"s depth each, then at least 10"s of hay to extend beyond that line a little and keep renewing the hay as it breaks down.ours also do well with watering from our grey water when needed, but i also save my wee water for ours as well and they get 1/2 bucket each twice a week of this wee fresh water mix (by that i mean i top up the bucket to full so at least 1/2 the bucket will be wee).
using the above method we grew great juicy citrus that got only available rainfall in a medium rainfall area when we were in rural.
if you have heavy clay add a good dose of gypsum under the above and i suppsoe without a ph test a handfull of dolomite won't do a lot of damage.
also find they do better on western aspects usually they have the extremes of micro climate.
snipped With peace and brightest of blessings,
len
-- "Be Content With What You Have And May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In A World That You May Not Understand."
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