I thought Id share my sign out in front of my farm/nursery. The doctor in Florence SC who owns the pink grapefruit tree has teamed up with me and we are selling local citrus here at the farm stand in north eastern South Carolina. Im selling surplus satsumas and he is furnishing the seedless pink grapefruit. Sales have been brisk with many repeat customers! Hopefully in two years when the satsuma grove kicks in.. we can start a retirement account!

Stan, living in the south all your life you don't realize how southern your sign is. Out here in the west (Colorado) you never see the term "Greens" referring to various leafy plants. Just like out here one never ever hears the term "Sweet Tea". Sorry I missed your place, but when I see it I might be able to pick a satsuma. Nice sign, by a nice fellow. Take care.

According to the seminar I went to at Fairhope (one of Auburn's Ag Research Stations) a satsuma grove should produce about $20,000/acre when mature (400 #/tree x 100 trees/acre x $0.50/lb). Of course there is a lot of work in taking care of 100 trees/acre and harvesting 20 tons of fruit/acre.

I hope you do very well with your grove and maybe one day when my wife retires, we will find ourselves in SC and stop by your roadside stand.-- Good Luck Stan

Your sigh looks good Stan. I assume those are Meyer Lemons, if so, I would say the price is right!

Ned

If I was driving on this road I would stop and buy.Local citrus is always better than grocery store bought IMHO.I like collard greens,mustard greens,turnip greens, turnip and mustard mix with turnip roots (my favorite) and rutabaggas with rutabagga greens (hard to find)-boy am I getting hungry again-this would be good with some Jalepeno Cornbread and Hot Pepper Sauce! I have had only 1,375 calories today-can you tell?

Thanks Fellas for the comments.. and yes, Millet, I was telling someone yesterday, My 60th Birthday, that I have been doing farm work since I was 6! My folks put me on a mules back to guide him down the rows of crop while the harvesters did their job. I would have to be Southern and Country Southern at that!... even my farm sign is Southern! LOL... It has been a great leap from a mules back to the computer age! In some ways, life is better now and in some ways its not.
I grow winter vegetables and summer vegetables. David, all those greens you named are produced right here on my farm.. One of my favorites is collard greens cooked with cabbage! Talk about delicious!
Skeeter, thanks for those stats on the satsuma trees. I sell my citrus by the half bushel...I am hoping for 2 bushels per tree maybe 3 when they really start producing.. with 135 trees in my grove.. that will be a lot of mandarins! Yet, there are a lot of mouths out there and they all have the habit of eating.. With the health benefits of fresh citrus and the unique aspect of picking your own here in my area.. I dont forsee a logjam of rotten fruit!

Since your heart and passion are into it, you would be successful, not that you already are now!

I don't remember the entire chart that they provided, but the 400 #/ tree was for trees at 9 years and older.

There was a lady there (First name Frances) that did her PhD dissertation on the economics of satsumas and freeze protection. She had lots of data on productivity and cost of various means of protection. Her conclusion on the most $s returned was what you have done-- micro jet sprinklers -- one aimed directly at the trunk and one round head in the scaffold branches. They figure that with that setup, you could save the tree, loose the next crop, but be back to production the following yr. One surprise in her data was that it was cheaper to put in a 4 in. well for each acre than to put in a larger well (6 or 8 in.) when planting more than one acre.

The high tunnel greenhouse paid highest returns only when the price was over $1.00/lb, because you did not loose production approximately 1 out of 20 years.

As far as farm irrigation wells go, I don't know how it is in South Carolina, but here in Colorado they are quite hard to get. When we put in our farm well (6-inch steel 1000-ft. deep) we had to apply for a permit to the state and submit a beneficial use report to the state engineer. It took us two tries before a drilling permit was approved. Further a water meter has to be attached to each well, and the gallons used reported to the state engineer each year. We also installed 20-mm (20 year life) thick drip tape eight inches under ground. Both the water well and a 10 horse power air compressor/blower is attached to the under ground drip type. This enables us to irrigate, and also aerate the soil. When air is compressed it heats up, therefore we can aerate the soil with cold or hot air. In fact a 10 horse power compressor heats the air to such a high temperature, we had to install a heat exchanger to the compressor to regulate the temperature. The system works wonders. Our fertilizer program and some chemical applications are applied through the drip system. This type of system should have real advantages for a citrus grove growing on the edge of the citrus belt. In fact the system works so well, we were contacted by the EPA (through the engineering company that installed or system) with a proposal. The EPA said they would pay for 60 percent of the cost to install additional acreages of the drip/aeration/heat system, in return for us letting the EPA's representative to make various scientific measurements, agricultural records as to fertilization, pesticide use, crop growth records, erosion, and who know what else. I said no, as I do not want any type of association with an organization such as the EPA.

Just because of the physics of compressing air, air will gain heat. With a 10 horse compressor, the air was heated so high that the heat begin to melt the 2" PVC main. The compressor type is a paddle compressor, therefore no heat is lost due to expansion. We installed a heat exchanger, which worked by passing water through the exchanger core. This allowed us to regulate the temperature of the air that we send through the drip tape. After the air is sent through the drip lines for 5-10 minutes, the passage of the air warms the drip tubes, and then for the balance of the air injections, hot air is sent to the plants root zone. Sort of like running your house hot water for a minute or so before enough hot water passes through the pipes, to actually flow hot water out of the faucet. Hot air is sent through the system for tropical crops such as tomatoes, pumpkins etc. If a crop such as lettuce was being grown, than the heat exchanger would be increased, and cool air would be sent through the drip lines, to reduce the soil temperature near the lettuce root zone. The engineering company that installed the system in our fields is call Grow-Air.

Basic principle of cooling. Compress the air so that it has higher temperature, while it is under high pressure and temperature, remove the heat by passing through a condenser or your heat exchanger, so that when it expands again, through the evaporator, it will be cooler than before and thus is able to cool more.

It is excellent idea to apply it to drip pipes and irrigation system. Exactly the same principles that you can take advantage of, either cooling or heating or both. The world thanks the creative people, not the litigious patent trollers.

Actually, the first crop we grew on the new system, was a crop of Jack-Be-Little mini pumpkins for the Michael's Craft Stores chain throughout Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. The good part of the story is that applying the added heat and aeration to the plant's root zone, the vines produced a much larger number of pumpkins per vine than ever before. The bad part is that the crop came in two and a half weeks too early. Just as is true with anything new, one has to learn and adjust. After, we installed the system on our farm, and it proved very successful, a neighboring farm, actually a vineyard/winery corporation, installed the same system throughout their grapes.

Well, the true test to see if Stan is a true southerner is if he eats grits.

My grandmother was from Missouri and she would fix me grits every Christmas even though no one else in my family had a profound fondness for them exept for me. Grandma passed away two years ago, so this will be the second Christmas without Grandma's cheese grits, but my mother-in-law just moved out here to San Diego. Since she's a native Virginian from a very southern family, I'm going to see if we can get a bit of the south into Southern California this Christmas.

Phillip

I not only eat Grits... Ive even had the joy of eating "chitlins" on rare occasions! Grits are a staple here at my house because they are 1.cheap2. quick.3. easy.... a 1-2-3 recipe for my wife because thats the way she likes to cook. We also eat lots of rice. Its a part of just about every meal other than breakfast which consist of GRITS! Somone once said that the people from the S.C. Lowcountry are a lot like the Chinese! They eat lots of rice and worship their ancestors! The ancestor part is somewhat of a pun since just about everyone around here can relate a tale about their great grandfather who fought in the War Between the States or how their grandmother was part Cherokee... Some bit of the past that they seem to be proud of..You get my drift. Hope you enjoy your Christmas Grits.. IF all else fails, I could mail you a couple of packets of "instant Grits" all you do is add hot water and you are there! LOL