(dry) "Fitted stone" facades

Here, folks let them rot on the tree. Or, pick them -- but they are crap because they haven't attended to them throughout the growing season.

Navels are presently $1/pound in the store. We'll probably pick 250 pounds of navels and another 250 of valencia. We got 60 pounds of lemons off a

4 ft tree...
Reply to
Don Y
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And then what. You have 500 pounds of fruit that will only last a few weeks and nothing to do with it. That was my problem. I was trying to give away fruit all winter but everyone knew someone else with trees. I did make orange juice moonshine one year that was interesting.

Reply to
gfretwell

If it wasn't so far I'd pick up 10 or 20 pounds.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

We will leave many of the navels on the tree until they blossoms force us to pick them -- eating them off the tree as desired.

The Valencias get juiced. This year, so many navels that we are juicing them as well. Note that about half of the weight of the fruit gets lost in the juicing. E.g., 25 pounds of oranges yields about 6 quarts of juice (~12 pounds of liquid). The other

13 pounds goes in the trash. So, I'm guessing 15G of juice out of this harvest.

Last year, "fresh" oranges until June (out of the refrigerator) and (frozen) OJ until October. This year, we'll probably make it through December with the OJ.

(Having a very large freezer helps!)

Reply to
Don Y

Guess I am just not cut out to be a farmer.

Reply to
gfretwell

I'm not, either! I enjoy the lemons in my tea (more than a gallon gone, already). Also used in a couple of meals we prepare. The blood oranges were "mine, exclusively" (juiced). I used to look forward to a tall glass each morning!

The limes are good for making lime sherbet and ceviche. But, before the OLD tree fell victim to the cold, we would drop off ~40-50 pounds at the laundry at the local hospital (mexican workers would suck on lime slices while working) -- a little lime goes a LONG way (though, if you let them get *overly* ripe, they become very mellow and sweet!)

The pomegranate "experiment" was a failure. Despite seeing them grow like weeds in a neighbor's yard (who just lets the fruit ROT on the trees!)

Nor any luck with the artichokes.

Our hope is the new *dwarf* navels mature quickly and we can rely on them instead of the single semidwarf. Likewise, lose the valencia and replace it with a blood orange. All genuine dwarfs so we can protect them from the cold, easier (the semidwarfs are too big to cover -- 4 king size sheets sewn together per tree).

Reply to
Don Y

We grow coconuts and pineapples but they are largely maintenance free. We have been planting coconut trees down the river and some day there may be dozens of trees growing there. It will be our legacy to go along with Thomas Edison's bamboo. The pineapples come from the cut off tops of store bought fruit and the coconuts we grow from the nut. Some sprouted from our trees and we find a sprouted nut in the river now and then.

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Reply to
gfretwell

I'm hoping my neighbors don't see all the damn wildflowers as mine! :>

Hmmm... never would have thought the top of a pineapple would be a viable start to a new plant! OTOH, what *else* is there by way of "seed"?!

I tend to (want to) approach these things more rationally; i.e., why grow something if we can *buy* it? SWMBO claims our oranges are "much better" than anything store bought (we had a late freeze one year that killed off all the blossoms; she bought oranges from the store and the first words out of her mouth were "Oh, these are SO disappointing!").

As such, if you assume you're going to be growing *some* fruit, then you've already accepted the burden of doing so. Adding a lemon and blood orange is easier than opting to "add" the first fruit!

OTOH, some things have had mixed results. E.g., the pineapple guava fruit is essentially useless to us (acquired taste?). But, the blossoms are really pretty, the bush is reasonably dense (helps as a privacy screen) *and* it is pretty drought tolerant (so we can skimp on the watering).

Reply to
Don Y

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