Vainiglia Sangugigno still holding...
Amazing, that the taste gets better. They are edible, sweet but insipid since November. The taste is improving a lot, getting sweeter still with only a hint of zest now. Wonderfully sweet like fruit punch, very tiny acid taste, just a hint. The color of the skin is turning light pink! I've been sampling one or two each day. I guess nothing will be left by mid-March. I wanted to see how long it is going to hold on the tree.

Am truly going wild with my Tarocco and Sanguinelli.
They taste sweet and flavorful! I compared them side by side with store bought fruits that were from southern California, and I can't believe that me and my guests have rated my backyard harvested blood oranges to be far superior. Sweeter but more flavor. Even in blind taste tests, my fruits came out on top. Tarocco first, close second is Sanguinelli, and then followed by Moro. Moror is the one with the darkest pigmentation in the flesh. To think that I can grow it here in Davis, with quality better than from the stores, I am elated! I will chop off my washington navels and some of my cara-cara branches and topwork with various blood oranges.

The Cara-cara is now starting to sweeten. This time, the fruits are smaller compared to last year. The fruits are only half of what I got last year. I will wait till mid-march before sampling again.

The Salustiana did not develop the deep red orange flesh unlike when you grow them in Arizona. So this one will get topworked over with Tarrocco and Sanguinelli, perhaps other blood oranges too.

Joe, this past weekend I noticed on a tag from a Four Winds propagated Sanguinelli at a not-so-local hardware/nursery store, that the label from Four Winds stated Sanguinelli requires more heat than Moro for sweet fruit, yet your experience seems to differ. Any thoughts?

How much smaller than last year are this year's fruit? Is this just the Cara Cara or are other fruit smaller this year? When you say the fruit is only half of what you got last year, were you referring to quantity or size?

Most of my fruit this year is half the size of what I expected, but I attribute that to having fried the roots to most of my trees during the summer. Black pots on white rock are a bad combo, unless you diffuse the light. I won't be repeating that mistake, especially at my new house.

Kent

Kent,

I even suspected that the good tastes was the result of the Arctic blast! How would heat come into play here? Perhaps the heat during the summer, when my fruits are still marble sized? At any rate, the fruits this year are much better than last year. Sometimes we have to try them in our yard and see for ourselves and problem is we also need multiple year testing.

The cara-cara fruit size is half although I have three times the number this year, but my canopy volume is also about three times as much than last year, so that amazed me why the size has reduced. My other fruits like the Salustiana and Rohde Red are double in size.

Yes, was disappointed with Rohde Red. No deep dark orange flesh. Perhaps will have to wait some more, but only got one fruit left. The rats may get to it before I do, and there's only one left.

Speaking of which, I gassed the rats out last week, and seem no more new fruit bites so far.

My Friday job had some Cara Cara in the fruit bowls- I was just a touch disappointed. No fruit-punch or raspberry tones Id been waiting for. tasty, but wouldnt pay the premium for them.

Congrats on keeping such a wonderful orchard safe thru the bad weather, and happy reworking of tasty varieties!

I think that the naval oranges I get in So LA are sweeter when it has been cold. Heat may be important during the summer, but I do believe that winter cold has some influence as well.

My orange from greenhouse 2007:

Tarocco


Moro :

The Blood Oranges generally are not as sweet as a
Sweet Orange can get. The major difference in the
two types of Orange, aside from the obvious is in the
flavor and the viscosity of the juice. I believe Four
Winds sells their clone as Sanguinella (singular,
whereas Sanguinelli is plural) . There also is a
California nursery near Visalia that sells their
clone as Sanguinello.

Sanguinelli like the warm inland areas than they
will the coastal areas to achieve better color and
more flavor. I think this is what Mr. Dillon means
in reference to the Moro. Moro likes the warmth
also but can flavor up sooner even in coastal areas.
At the Lindcove Citrus tasting the Moro was the
best tasting Blood Orange and had the best color.
The Sanguinelli was too acid, not ripe yet, the inland
(desert) Tarocco too bland (almost insipid) and the
Tarocco sweet but not the most flavorful and had
the least best color. The Vaniglia Sanquigno
(Lindcove spelling) was sweet and the juiciest
of this group but did not have enough acid to have
much flavor to it yet. I had a hard time trying to
pinpoint the slight flavor of it at the time, had to
taste it again from another fruit when the palette
was cleaner and then thought the taste was closer
to a light flavored Sanguinelli the second time
I tasted it and a hint of Tangor the third time I
tasted it. Came away confused by it but felt that
it would have more flavor the longer it was held
on the tree. Marked it as one I will buy when it is
available to me. (It was all your fault Joe as I
kept thinking of what you had written about that
Orange in this forum while I was tasting it.)

It depends on what we want from these and where
we plan to grow them but they are all worthwhile
to have. We have to remember there can be huge
difference when an Orange or a Mandarin are
ripe and when they are mature. A case in point
was our Owari Satsuma that had ripe fruit that
we ate in February that were good enough coming
from a container grown tree and the fruit we ate
from the same tree 3 weeks ago that were mature
and were excellent. Even the misses was impressed
enough to allow me to go out an buy more Citrus
for her collection., knowing she has to water them
when I am not there. Sometimes the gripes of
why are we doing this go by the wayside when
we reap some of our rewards from our efforts.
All it took was a few fruit from trees that will
produce as good or better fruit again later as
they age to do all of the convincing for us.


Thanks for posting those photos, Petr! Makes
me want to go out and eat one of ours right off
the tree. I think I will.

Jim