My neighbors: Citrus

I love citrus. I crave it sometimes. Crave is not a word that comes up for me in connection with fruit. I love fruit and I eat it pretty regularly, but I'm never like, oh, man, an apple right now would really make my day. Citrus on the other hand, that can really brighten my day. I get this feeling more in winter, which makes sense as I look out the window at snow still on the ground with a cold foggy mist hanging above it. An orange or a lemon brings me back to brighter, warmer days. The colors! How do you not smile at a sunny orange or bright lemon? The juice! It's so dry right now, any extra fluid inside helps. The zing! Don't we all need a little extra vitamin C to help us through winter to keep that scurvy away? I'm reading some Jack London stories now, and scurvy does not sound like fun. Symptoms include rough dry skin, joint and body aches, fatigue, depression, increased susceptibility to infection, muscle weakness. Sounds like winter to me! London's stories are extreme. I love winter, but I have my limits and sub-zero temperatures with barely a glimpse of light is nowhere close to the winter I love. An orange would have really brightened their dark days, if it didn't freeze solid!

Citrus grows in tropical and subtropical locations. It's native to the southern slopes of the Himalayas, China and Southeast Asia. Early varieties were introduced to the Mediterranean along with so many other exotic foods in the 1st millennium BCE and they were a good match. Citrus doesn't like temperatures below 20. Who does? If you're feeling cold and over the winter, try dreaming about citrus, or enjoying a dreamy bite of an orange. Let it take you to those warmer places, if even for just a minute. Eat it. Savor it. Take a moment as you close your eyes and imagine the warm sun as you smell the orange that just squirted in your eye while you were peeling it. Picture the evergreen tree with glowing orbs of orange yellow or green on a hillside. Put yourself on that hillside in Southern California, Florida, Spain or Italy. Feel better?

We have a citrus that will over winter here in NJ. It's called trifoliate orange. You don't really want to eat it, but it's good for cooking or making something else, including medicine. It's rather bitter. Maybe you can relate if all your relatives are in warm places and you've decided to stay in the cold.

Our lemon tree in Oceanside after the fence fell on it during a storm.

My love of citrus plants started in San Diego. That's where it all started, where Paul and I met. But I already wrote that story. Now, we grow citrus in pots. We do not exactly have room for this luxury. Who's using the guestroom in New Jersey in January anyways? To us, it's well worth the sacrifice of space. And by sacrifice, I include twice yearly blood offerings as we transport these dagger filled trees in and out of our little house. Scratches on my forehead, stabs to my fingers, snags on my arm skin. It's worth it to help these trees. They definitely wouldn't have survived this insanely cold winter. They aren't too thrilled about being cooped up inside either, but we try our best and at least they're not frozen and they get supplemental light. I can leave our citrus out until November, usually, but they get cranky about the short days and tend to copy the other deciduous trees around us, turning a little yellow and dropping leaves. This makes me wonder if they are a true evergreen, or only so in locations where the day light stays closer to 12 hours a day. Or at least above 10. An overlooked benefit of being in a tropical area is the daylight doesn't change so drastically. If you travel to or grow citrus in Spain, France or Portugal let me know how your trees behave. 

When we bring the trees in in October, they're stoked. They love the warmth and the light. By December, they are filled with so many flowers that fill the house with fragrance. It's intoxicating sometimes getting to the point of sickening. They don't last long. And if it's too much, they make a delicious cordial or syrup. I made a cordial with the blossoms and pomegranate one year. So good. I used to tickle all the flowers to help pollination. Then I got lazy and still got fruit. It's great to do a job for years only to realize you don't need to and you're actually not a necessary part of the process. It turns out that citrus don't need pollination to initiate fruit production. Most of the seeds are the result of asexual reproduction, apomixis. Unlike many other fruits, you know what you'll get. A lemon will produce lemons and if you plant the seeds, you'll get another lemon tree. Probably. God knows what you'll get if you plant an apple seed. But if you want to create a new type of citrus or make it more adapted to your environment good luck finding that one seed that was fertilized! 

Fruit growing indoors, and some grumpy leaves.

As I write this, our 3 varieties of cities are living in our guest room. And as I mentioned, they are kinda picky. They're drought tolerant and ok with some dry spells. Pots are always a challenge when it comes to water. We found that watering once a week until the water comes out into the tray underneath the pot is perfect. I procrastinated and went 2 weeks last month. When we finally watered, they dropped hundreds of leaves and some fruit in a dramatic show of disapproval. They'll get over it. The stress of being inside also opens them up to predators like spider mites and scale. Keeping a fan in the room and a bit of humidity seems to help. Usually they get to March or so when they've finally just had it. And so have I.

By January, there's all sorts of tiny green fruits along with all the fruits that are ripe or close to ripe from the last flowering. They're kind of perpetual flower-ers. Fruit takes forever to ripen. By forever, I mean six to sixteen months. The heaviest flowering seems to happen for us in December and then again in July or August. I think it's triggered by the increase in temperature that comes in summer and then our artificial heat in our house. In their more native environment, they'd flower heavily in spring and then put out a few other flowers throughout the year. The fruit seems to ripen better with cooler temps. I remember trees in San Diego just always having Fruit. Or like my parents' tree, never having fruit. I blamed the dog for eating all the bees and other buzzing friends. After revisiting my old subtropical fruit production notes, I realize this isn't the problem. The dog is still crazy, and so is my dad. He had a years long battle with the birds and possibly rats eating all the fruit. Not many animals seem to like citrus, but the birds will pluck the little fruits off, maybe for fun. He tried nets and the birds just went under it. He tried shiny things and noisy things. He even drew a giant eyeball on a piece of plastic poster board one year. He posted it on a long pole. It had veins and all to make it look angry. That worked for about a day. Eyes are scary, but birds learn pretty quick. I think he gave up after that. Luckily for us, my sister has an abundance of citrus; lemons, limes, oranges, mandarins, kumquats. When I visit, I carry an extra bag to fill up and carry home. TSA agents roll their eyes and I smile, knowing I just brought a little California sun home to New Jersey.