Grapefruit Trees and Rebar...The Odd Pair!

  The oddities found on the Bayou never fail to intrigue me.  By oddities, I am referring to things found where they do not belong.  Sure, I find the occasional trowel on a tree stump or perhaps part of my lawnmower in the bushes (different story but still interesting) but those are nothing compared to say a filet knife found on the rooftop!  I have yet to figure out how that got there and whether I have some unknown enemy out there threatening my wellbeing with a filet knife! Still, these things are interesting, to say the least.

  Today's find?  Well...a piece of rebar.  While that, in itself, is not the most unusual find, the whereabouts of said rebar is.  What in the world was a piece of rebar doing up in the top of the grapefruit tree???  That...my friends...is the question of the day!

  Mark finally took the notion to cut out the dead parts of the citrus trees.  Termites had taken up residence in the roots of the trees and pretty much killed the grapefruit trees.  (Who says that citrus oil helps prevents an infestation??  Yeah, I read that somewhere.  Definitely not true.)  Anyway, as he cut the thirty foot tall trees down, a piece of rebar came tumbling to the ground.  Thankfully, it did not hit anyone or anything as it plummeted to the ground.  

  The rebar is bent into a lovely hook-shape making me ponder if someone had tried to use it to shake down fruit at some point.  It is approximately twenty-one inches long so is quite large.  I asked Son, since he has always picked the fruit from these huge trees for us, but he says that he always just climbed the trees.  Yep, that is something that I can vouch for as I am the one to "catch" those hefty fruits as he tosses them from the treetops.  Mark said he did not attempt such a dangerous game of tossing a rebar thirty feet into the air and I know I could never heave that thing up there.  This leaves me one conclusion...perhaps the rebar was hung on a low limb when the tree was small and then hoisted as the tree grew?  Who knows???  Surely, it was not the same culprit that left the knife on the rooftop....you think?  

  All is well that ends well, however.  The grapefruit trees are thinned of dead wood and the danger of the rebar hook has now passed.  Still...lingering questions....always lingering questions!

Trunk Wraps and Smudgepots

  While we await round two of the frigid weather to strike the Bayou, I did the usual preparations.  One of the chores was to rewrap the citrus trees.  While there is not much that I can do about the entire trees due to sheer size (some are a more than 20 feet tall), I can only hope wrapping the trunks will save the the tree above the grafting point.  A blanket and a wind/ice shield wrapped and tied in place will have to suffice.  There is hardly anything else that can be done.  

  Back on the farm, I can remember getting up for "my shift" as fire-stoker.  This meant, not only making sure the fireplaces in the old farmhouse were burning, but also, the smudgepots in the midst of the citrus trees were chugging along properly.  Being a small-time farm family, we did not have the expensive gas or oil burners that folks with huge orchards used.  Our smudgepots were simply 50 gallon drums that were piled full of logs and kept burning all night.  Once the hot coals filled most of the drum, things were easy.  It was those first hours that needed tending the most.  Getting out of that warm bed and going outside in the middle of the night in icy temperatures was not something that I relished but it was necessary.  Pop tended the fires most of the night but if the weather continued for a week or more, he needed rest.  The kids took over and tended the fires, made sure the faucets were still dripping and lights were still burning in the pump shed.  It was also necessary to keep check on all of the farm animals so they were as snug as possible.  Life on a truck farm was not easy.  I would not have traded it for the world, though, as I learned so much.

  This afternoon as I went out to do one last check on things, I noticed that the grapefruit trees did not fare so well during last week's big chill.  There was no earthly way to protect these trees so I left them be and hoped for the best.  With north winds blowing a gale today, leaves were tumbling to the ground. There was already a thick carpet of leaves beneath the trees.  This is not good as I was in hopes that the leaves would provide coverage for the trunks.  The poor trees are in for another cold week!  Perhaps, I need to get a couple of smudgepots going!

 

You Missed One!

  Here it is March and we are still getting fruit from the citrus trees. While this seems delightful for us, it is probably not the best thing for the trees.  A few are already budding.  Those last lingering fruits needed to be picked.  This is far easier said than done.  While picking the satsumas, lemons, kumquats and navel oranges is relatively easy, the picking of the grapefruit presents quite the problem.  Since the trees are a good forty feet tall, getting to the fruit is quite the ordeal.  Son usually has to climb the tree and then use an extension pole rigged with a hook.  The fruit comes tumbling down and often splits when coming in contact with the ground.  This makes for problems.  The fruit then has to be eaten or canned immediately.  I can only do so much.  The two trees bear over 500 huge fruits.

  At the beginning of this month, Mark took the extension pole and just shook the branches.  Fruit was flying everywhere!  Dozens splatted on the hard ground making them unusable but twice as many bounced and never received a single bruise.  Once again, the kitchen was filled with citrus fruit.  I needed no more.  The jars were already filled canned jams, jellies and marmalades.  Gallon jugs were filled to the brim with dehydrated slices.  Quart jars held dehydrated and pulverized peels.  What was I to do with more fruit?  It was given to any unsuspecting visitor to the Little Bayou House.  

  Then, when we were out on our hike, we spied the Evil Grapefruit!  One large fruit still clung to a limb high in the top of the tree!  I cannot rid myself of these things!  There it hung as if mocking me all the while gleaming in the morning sunlight.  When I saw it, I had to start laughing.  "You missed one!" I told Mark.  He just looked at me in disbelief and murmured what I hope was "It seems that way."  

Its that humidity!

  I don't know if it is or not.  The humidity thing always seems to get in the way when discussing the weather.  If it feels hot in the summer, it is because there is high humidity.  If the temperature feels colder in the winter, it is that high humidity once again.  Sometimes this just does not make a lot of sense to me.  If I am hot, I am hot and the same goes for when I am cold.  I tried asking a few questions about it and the answers all assured me that humidity does, indeed, cause changes in the way we "feel" temperature.  Moist air in the summer time can make us hotter simply because the air cannot absorb our sweat (which is a type of cooling called evaporative cooling!).  Air can only hold so much water and if there is already a bunch floating around out there, our sweat stays with us instead of cooling us.  In winter, since the air has so much water in it during high humidity type days, it takes more of our body heat to warm the space around us.  Thus, heat is actually pulled away from our bodies at a more rapid rate making us feel a lot colder. Whew!  Did you know all of that?  I did not!

The grapefruit trees after the last freeze.

One lone grapefruit hangs defiantly after the last freeze!

  Now, since it all of this has to do with how our bodies react to humidity and temperature, I wondered if the same was true for plants....and I still wonder.  I have no answers.  The reason that I am so curious about this is last year we had ice storms with the temperatures down in the teens.  Yes, my citrus trees froze or at least their leaves did. During the springtime, the trees came back in full force.  (All except for the lemons and limes...they are quite dead!)   I can't say much about that, though.  I expected the trees to freeze with temperatures in the teens.  What surprises me is the fact that, once again, my poor trees have met with a traumatic winter!  We have had several nights dip into the twenties (not teens) and the trees have lost their leaves.  The only real difference beside temperature is the humidity.  The recent cold nights that had temperatures in the mid-twenties were clear with very low humidity.  So did temperatures in the teens with high humidity feel colder to the trees than the temperatures in the mid twenties with low humidity?  Both froze my trees.  Pop always used to want cloudy nights when the temperatures would be forecast to drop below freezing.  He claimed that the clouds would form a "blanket" and keep the plants warmer.  I have stuck with that theory with my garden and it seems to be working.  So...higher humidity keeps things warmer or colder?  Or do I just need a nice warm blanket of clouds to protect my plants? Me....I blame it on that humidity!

Winter Woes

Oh, the ravages of wintry weather!  Our recent cold spell spelled trouble for the citrus trees.  At first, I did not think things were so bad.  Sure the leaves were a bit "burned" but overall the trees still appeared to be fine.  After meandering through the orchard today, I am not so sure.  The lemons, limes and naval orange seem to have been the worst hit.  These trees are more in the open and do not have the coverage that larger trees would provide.  Plus, these trees are quite young which might make a difference.  Their ability to tolerate the cold might not be as strong as some of the older trees.  Michael is once again telling me to have patience.  He claims that plants are more durable that we think.  I do hope he is right.  Once before these very same trees froze nearly to the ground and if it had not been for his urging, I would have cut them all.

The cold also took a good toll on the grapefruit trees.  I am thinking that these will survive but might have a bit of a setback in producing fruit.   A thick carpet of leaves can be found beneath the two trees.  The trees look a mite bare compared to just a few weeks ago.  It surprised me to see that the Satsumas and kumquats were hardly bothered at all.  Do these trees know something that the others do not?

Now, it is to happen all over again.  For the next few nights the temperatures are to drop below freezing and the days will not warm much.  This does not bode well for the citrus trees.  There is just not a lot that I can do to protect the trees because of their size. Pop used to light a "burn barrel" in the midst of his trees when the temperatures dipped below freezing.  That smudge was to keep the area a bit above freezing.  I can remember that he and my oldest brother would go out several times during the night to stoke those barrels.  I am not sure it worked at all or whether it was to give him hope.  At least he was trying to save his trees.  I cannot make that claim other than the mulch that Michael and I laid on the roots.  I have no metal drums to use as burn barrels and even if I did, I do not relish getting out in the middle of the night to feed a fire!  I will just trust in my son's instinct and leave the trees be.  "Have patience, Mom, have patience."  Sometimes I think Michael knows a thing or two about plants!  (I sure hope my patience holds and that the citrus trees survive.)