It is such a thrill for me to grow any citrus. Sure we had lots of different oranges etc to eat growing up but I was never thrilled with how they tasted. It was not until I worked on a Moshavim near Nazareth that I got to taste what a real orange should be. What a difference! They all flower in the spring and grow for a long time before we pick them so it makes sense that organically grown they have time to really develop flavor. These Ruby Red Grapefruit are only fertilized with Blue Bottle Coffee grounds about once per year. The coffee from your latte still has valuable nutrients which the citrus can use. We just tip the bio degradable bags under the trees move them around a bit with our boots and walk away. The worms do the rest. This year we did move a few chicken tractors through the citrus grove as an experiment and so we will see of the next year how the growth of the trees changes.
Everyone has one grapefruit this week along with Tangerines and Tangelos. We picked the later two over the weekend because of the frosty mornings. Last year just before the Holidays we lost much of our citrus to a very cold spell. Jose and I were concerned that after the rains stopped temperatures would drop. They did and we decided that they had had enough cold and tasted just great so we called in the crew a few days early to pick them all.
Our fields were laser leveled back before we bought the farm in 1998. The slope about 2% from West To East. The citrus on the West side do much better than those on the East. Just that little bit of slope taking the cold air away is making a big difference. I will make sure when we plant more they will always go on the west side. No point in fighting gravity.