Now there’s a sight I like to see on a winter morning…a colander full of oranges on the kitchen window sill! Oranges take forever to ripen, but as a rule, when all is well, we have our own fruit from July through to December. These are Washington Navels….and when we’ve picked these two trees clean of fruit, we’ll move onto the Valencias. So far, so good….they are deliciously sweet this year!
We planted these four trees in what is now the chook run, in 1992, so they’re over 20 years old (I know because I’m mid-cataloguing the garden, but more about that in another post!). Mandarins and Clementines ripen far earlier than these oranges, and the Seville, which we use for marmalade, much later (all useful information when it comes to selecting your own citrus trees to plant).
Oh but I wish I could work out where to plant a Blood Orange….perhaps I should just put one in a large terracotta pot!