The satsumas in my 135 tree grove have finally colored up enough that I can start harvesting and selling. The early varieties of St Ann and La Early are the ones that I am selling right now. Sales have been brisk and I imagine the upcoming weeks will see more and more customers. This is the 3rd year of growth and many of the trees have a good fruit load on them. Im posting a picture of the size of the St Annes that I took last season. Will try and postsome newer pictures soon!

Way to go Stan!!!

What size were your trees when you planted?

Are you using a spray mist system for freeze protection.

Do you have a link to an earlier post or posts that outline your orchard layout and maintenance?

135 plants is that 3/4 to 1 acre?

Stan the man! Today you rock! Congratulations!!!!!

Hello Charles, the trees I planted in the grove were about a year or so old when I planted them...Id estimate no more than a couple of feet tall. I have used the misting system in the past to protect them from really hard cold and there are some pictures and past post of the grove from the time it was planted until this past summer. I think they can be found in the Hardy Citrus Forum zone 8 and lower. Thanks for the comment!

Stan, they look great. Congratulations.

Congrats , it is nice to know that a profit can be made while enjoying citrus.

Looking good Stan.

Awesome!!

So maybe if I get mine ordered this fall and planted in five years my mini grove of twenty trees may resemble this.

Thanks for the pic. Is it an illusion or are your rows elevated some.

Charles that is no illusion, the trees are on raised beds. Its flat as a pancake here and as you know, citrus like good drainage. I had the beds raised about 3 ft for good drainage. If you treat citrus trees nice, they will grow very quickly!

Stan, they look so good that I would like to place an order!

looking awesome! thanks for sharing and the inspiration

Wow those babies grew. Doesn’t seem that long ago when you posted pictures of the newly planted crop.
What are you using to keep the grass from taking over?
Karl

For weed control, I mostly use a 6 ft bushog cutter mounted to my farm tractor.. along with the occaisonal weed eater up close around the trees.. and then I also make an appication or so on the furrows with a product whose initials are R U....

Hey Stan,

I looked through most of your two hundred posts and it was pretty impressive watching your grove grow. A while back Skeeter inquired about your nozzle placement on you misters but I did not see an answer. What he was asking and what I am curious about is we did not see a lower trunk spray head just a top nozzle. Last Friday he and I visited the Auburn University test site in Fairhope Al to look at their citrus groves of which they have three. One is large mature trees maybe 15 to 20 years old. On these trees they used two nozzles per tree. One was on the north side of the tree and sprayed directly on the trunk. The second one was about four to five feet up in the center and sprayed 360 degrees. These trees were as I said large. They had Owari that were about fifteen feet wide and twelve feet plus tall. You could get under the branches and stand under the canopy. Kumquats that were fifteen to twenty feet tall and loaded for picking. One grove of mostly smaller trees (under six feet) had some of the newer varieties they were testing. One of the reasons we had gone there was to get some budwood. Sadly they no longer allow the harvesting of budwood citing disease control as a reason. They did appear to have a good bit of rust on some of thier groves and we observed at least two trees in bad decline from some ailment. We were disappointed but we completely understand. All in all we had a good trip and I came away with a better understanding of what citrus trees look like at various stages of maturity. I was a bit surprised at the openness of the younger fruiting trees. I guess I was expecting a fuller looking tree.

OK back to the point. I saw the pictures of your grove after a freeze and it appeared that your trees received nearly 100% coverage with ice using the single spray head. Is that why you only have one? The second one isn’t needed? As your trees grow will you come back with a second one? Will your canopy lift exposing the trunks as the tree gets larger requiring a dedicated trunk sprayer? While I’m exposing my ignorance can you give some specifics about your systems water flow, pipe sizes, type of nozzles, control system and well details? Also what is your tree spacing in the row and spacing for the rows? Are any of your trees on dwarfing rootstock?

Sorry for all the questions.
Thanks for your help,

I will attempt to answer the questions you posed in the last post as best I can.. The reason I have only used one spray tip is that up until now, the trees were so small that the (1) 360 degree spray tip pretty much covered the entire tree. They have grown so much thisseason that I no lnonger think this system will work. Rather than employ more spray tips I am strongly considering moving to a different system. Heres my plan.. I first of all plan to move the sprayer rigs to a posisition between each of the trees in the empty space. I then plan on putting 8 ft poles in the ground much like fence post... this will be done right down the ridge of the citrus rows in between the trees. I will then come back with an 8 ft 2X4 nailed on top of each post, reaching out over the limbs much like an old fashioned clothes line. I will then nail small slats length wise to the ends of the T poles I have in the ground. I plan on attaching recycled plastic down each row on both sides of the T post... I may leave the top open or I may cover it with shade cloth or some other permable material that will allow rainwater to get thru. I figure with the sides protected and the 60+ degree groundwater spraying in between each tree, this should give off enough warmth to keep my grove healthy on pretty much the coldest night we can have. As a general rule, we dont get much lower than mid teens. As for spacing, the trees are on about a 10 ft spacing and the water source is a 4 inch deep well that supplies my house as well as the grove. Hope these answers give you a more in depth look at what I am doing. Thanks!



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