The Lemon Trees Say "It Is Spring!"

   After the fiasco of the past few days of toting the plants out of the greenhouse then back in again, I am tempted to do the same again.  Should I?  Should I trust that our warming trend is going to last?  It is far too difficult as an old lady to lug the huge pots but I do want the plants to be happy.  I have been trying to thin the "herd" by giving plants to friends and family but they are in the same quandary.  Is it spring?  Probably not but the plants have no idea.

  This morning when I stepped into the greenhouse, a lovely scent surrounded me.  While I like the scent of plants, this was captivating!  I knew exactly what was happening and it was far too early.  The lemon trees that were not set in the ground last year, were all blooming...inside the greenhouse.  This is fine and dandy except there are very few pollinators willing to stay trapped inside.  These plants need to be outside!

  For the past few years, the same thing has happened.  All of the fruit trees bloom early and then a late freeze takes most of the fruit.  Mom always called that the "Easter Freeze" and would scold Pop for planting tomatoes in the fields too early.  I take after Pop.  I get antsy just sitting around waiting for the seasons to change.  Plant!  Plant!  Plant!  Yep, I do have tomato seedlings already in tiny pots waiting for the proper time (or when I get tired of seeing them "cooped up" in the greenhouse.)  I am indeed pushing the season.  In the meantime, however, the greenhouse has never smelled so nice!  Think I shall linger there a bit longer each morning.

Endings and Beginnings

   The day started out cloudy, cool and with high humidity.  Any normal person would have most likely snuggled deeper under the blankets and said "Let things take care of themselves for a while."  Not me.  As soon as the sun started peeping over the pines on the far side of the Bayou, I headed to the citrus trees to see if any could be salvaged after that spell of cold last month.  Our plants, like us, down here in the Deep South are not accustomed to days on end of freezing temperatures.  The trees look bad.  So...I started clearing the dead branches in hopes of salvaging what I can.

  One thing about the cold is that it makes even evergreens like citrus lose their leaves.  That loss uncovers a lot of things.  While working on the trees, I made careful note of any "keepers" and let the branch stay.  Keepers being egg cases of beneficial critters. There are both endings and beginnings to be found here. One lemon tree had several nice praying mantis egg cases.  The cases were still firm and showed no signs of damage so I was careful to leave each one.  Hopefully, the cold did not bother the eggs and hopefully no other critter will come along and raid the case.  I can use as many of these as will hatch.  They are indeed friends of the garden.

  Like I said, the citrus trees look bad but perhaps not all is lost.  Some still have "green" closer to the main stalk.  Our crop may be pitiful this next fall but that is to be understood.  It does make me glad that I froze gallons of the juice and made marmalade and jelly with the rest of the fruit.  We will have plenty to keep us happy until the trees recuperate.  Now if we can get through the next several months without a repeat performance by Mother Nature.  I love winter but not when it dips down cold enough for long enough to damage the trees.  For now, I will happily trim the trees and guard the egg cases of the garden friends.

One Day...Four Seasons

   Sometimes, Mother Nature just cannot make up her mind.  She, like so many of us, can be described as downright fickle!  Frosty one day, hot the next seems to be the norm now.  I am ok with that but, my goodness, Mother Nature, don't go smacking the seasons totally together!  That just gets far too confusing for everyone!

  Early this morning, I wandered through the gardens only to wind up behind the greenhouses.  Being as this area is sheltered from the north wind, I had left the potted lemon trees on the little back deck with good intentions of finally getting them transplanted in the ground.  Since the other citrus trees fare well during our winters, I figured there was not much use in lugging the huge pots into the greenhouse.  The trees did well and I was fully surprised to see new growth and large buds on the branches!  Whoa!  Hold on, Lemon Trees!  It is not spring yet!  The trees begged to differ, however.  As I looked, I began to notice more and more buds on all four lemon trees.  Well, if a late freeze does come, I suppose I shall be hauling the trees into the greenhouse after all just to try to save the blooms.  Mother Nature!  You sure are pushing it!  I shook my head in disbelief.

  Turning back toward the garden, a flash of red caught my eye.  Oh, my!  Just a few steps before, it was spring!  Now, it is fall!  Yep, one of the Sweetgum trees was in its glory with red leaves!  The bright red leaves brought some much needed color to the yard but that poor tree must totally be confused!  The small tree stuck out like a sore thumb among all the drab of winter.  

 Huh?  Wait!  It IS supposed to be winter!  Fall was several months ago!  Come on, Mother Nature!  Really?  Spring and fall right in the middle of winter?  My thoughts were jumbled.  I was trying to wrap my head around what was happening here as I slapped a mosquito that was buzzing around my ear.  Mosquito???  Oh, no....summer, too?  Mother Nature!  This is too much!  Stop it!  *Just as an added note...our temperatures reached nigh on 80 degrees this afternoon but are supposed to plummet into the 30s tonight.  Crazy!

Lemons!

   It has been a year since Hurricane Zeta did a number on our greenhouse (I use the word greenhouse loosely here as it is more like a very windowy shed).  The roof was gone and a lot of the windows were busted but other problems got in the way of repairing the greenhouse.  The house, pier and yard needed to be tended to before the greenhouse.  Finally, Son has found the time to reroof the building.  Next will come the window repairs.  For now, however, I am simply ecstatic to have a roof going in place.  

  While I was out trying to "help" remove what old roofing was still in place a few days ago, I noticed that the lemon trees were loaded with fruit.  What I thought was going to be a bleak year for citrus fruit seems not to apply to the lemons trees.  Even though these trees are in pots (due to repair work around the house causing me to dig the trees), they are flourishing.  This may make me rethink about planting them in the ground again.  Maybe larger pots?  

  I have been pondering a way of overwintering avocado trees in pots so perhaps the same can be done with the citrus trees.  The large ones can stay in the ground but maybe a few in pots under a protective roof would be the way to go.  We may not have much in the way of oranges, grapefruit and satsumas this year but it seems as if we will have plenty of lemons!

Lemony Goodness!

   Imagine my surprise at entering the tumble-down greenhouse (due to Hurricane Zeta and other priorities) to be confronted by a most delicious aroma!  Out of desperation, I had lugged all of the potted lemon trees into the poor greenhouse back before a bad freeze and then promptly forgot about them.  Sad to say, I even forgot to water them for the past month!  How did the trees reward me for being so neglectful?  By blooming, of course!  The trees are covered with blossoms!  Sweet!

  It is not my nature to keep trees in pots for long but these had to be moved due to work on the house.  It was either try to salvage the trees by potting or cut them to the ground.  I tried and the trees are doing well.  I thought this was to be a temporary situation but it has turned into something a bit longer than anticipated.  Today, as I walked among the half dozen trees, I promised to transplant them during next winter as it is too late now.  The season of setting fruit is upon us not transplanting. 

  So, I lugged the trees back outside and gave them a good dousing with the water hose.  That will do for a bit since we are to have stormy weather in two days.  Then, the trees will get the soaking they deserve!  Several handfuls of fertilizer before the rain will assure good nutrients for their roots.  Perhaps a few lemons will set for this fall!  It is all about those lemons!

Let's Try That Again!

  This has been a weird growing season.  Folks all over the Coast are complaining that their gardens are "just not doing right."  Seasoned gardeners are having difficulty getting seeds to sprout and plants to grow.  If seeds do pop out of the ground, the plants come to a standstill and refuse to grow.  While most are blaming the seed companies, others are blaming the weather.  The weather is fine other than a bit too much rain and we did have one late freeze and a late frost.  Perhaps, I am fortunate.  I planted much earlier than other folks and the garden is doing well.  Others planted after that last freeze and are having difficulties.  So, just what is going on with the gardens??  No one seems to have an answer.

  Speaking of weather related problems, the late frost pretty much did a number on the citrus blossoms.  All of the trees bloomed on time but then, bam!...a frost caused blossom drop.  The trees bloomed again.  Some managed to do well but the poor lemon trees had problems with the orange dog caterpillars stripping them of every leaf and bloom.  Normally, the caterpillars do not hatch until after the fruit has set so there is not a serious problem but because of the second blooming, the caterpillars and blooms were at the same time.  Eating the blooms is almost unheard of!  

  Today, however, I noticed that the lemon trees are on their third blooming of the year.  "Let's try this again!" the trees seem to be thinking.  Perhaps this time, the fruit will set and the trees will hold until ripening.  I will say this..those trees are persistent!  

  Other than those few setbacks with the fruit trees, the garden is finally doing well.  We should be harvesting fresh vegetables within the week and fruit throughout the summer.  The peach, plum, fig and citrus trees have finally gotten their acts together and the vegetable garden is flourishing!

The Limon Tree???

  Along about this time of year, I get to pondering the methods used to create "hybrid" or specialty fruits.  There is a lot of work that goes into cross pollinating blooms.  Maybe the process has changed a good bit since I helped Pop back on the farm but the idea is probably still the same.  Most of the time, we were experimenting with fruit trees.  You find the fruit tree that makes the largest, sweetest and most appealing fruit, then artificially pollinate it with a tree that is a prolific bearer.  The result would hopefully be a tree that had both.  It took knowledge, time and an awful lot of patience and luck to get the results that were desired.  Grafting seemed to be the way to go.  With grafting, a branch from one tree was attached to another and you merely came up with more trees with the same type of fruit.  It was easier than pollinating and did not take nearly as long to see results.

  What brings up this matter is that the citrus trees are blooming.  While we have a variety of trees, one in particular, started the pondering.  Years ago, this tree started out as a lemon.  It made the nicest lemons imaginable!  Then, a few days of below freezing weather brought that all to a halt.  The tree died all the way to the ground.  I was ready to pull up the dead thing and start over but at the urging of Son, I did not.  "Give it time." said the man of few words.  So I did.  The tree grew.  I suppose this was a grafted tree and the "lemon" died but the original tree root somehow survived...but what was that original rootstock?   

  Once the tree was large enough to bloom, it did so profusely!  Thousands of blooms dotted the branches.  Oddly enough, the blooms outnumber the leaves making a rather funny looking tree.  Of those thousands of blooms, some made fruit. The tree was no longer a lemon tree.  The fruit appeared to be a lime...on the outside.  It never ripened to the lemon yellow but stayed the rich lime green.  Inside, however, the fruit tasted like lemon!  It was delicious!  So the tree stayed.

  This year, the tree did not disappoint with its blooms.  Hopefully, I will have a bumper crop of lemons...uhh...limes....uhh...limons?  Whatever!  

One Smart Mama!

  Back behind the house near the canebrake, we have a dozen or so citrus trees.  In this small grove, there are two trees that were (at one time) lime trees.  One winter the icy weather froze the two lime trees and they died back to the ground.  I wanted to remove the dead trees but Son insisted that we "give them time".  The man has the patience of a saint and believes in giving everything time to thrive.  I begrudgingly agreed to leave the trees for three months but then, if they showed no signs of life, they were to be removed.  He was right.  The trees both came out from the roots and flourished but, instead of limes, they produced a weird fruit that seemed to be a cross between a lime and a lemon.  I had no problem with that as I like both.  The trees are now approximately ten feet in height and doing well but....they now have thorns...huge thorns...which brings me to the whole point of this story.

  Last week, while out trimming around the trees, I noticed that a pair of cardinals were busy nest-building in the lemon/lime tree.  The birds did not seem to mind me clearing the area so I continued my work and they snatched bits and pieces of twigs from my trash.   Now, Mama Cardinal is setting on her eggs in the beautifully made nest. Mama Cardinal is smart.  She usually nests in the Boysenberry vines but since they are sparse this year, she chose the thorny branches of this tree.  She is safe from most predators because of her choice of nesting sites.  Not many predatory mammals are going to risk being torn to shreds by the many long thorns.  With the thatching of thorns above her, it would be quite unusual for a hawk or crow to attempt raiding the nest.  The only predator that Mama Cardinal has to fear would be a snake.  Just like Mama, a snake could find its way between the thorns and make a raid on the eggs.  Papa Cardinal stays nearby and is always ready to defend his ladylove so, hopefully, this smart mama will be able to raise her little ones safely. 

 

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.)