We planted an orange tree (we bought it from Home Depot) It was
Washington Navel Orange.
(4 years back)
It gave 4-5 fruits for the first time this year. We were expecting it
to be sweet and easy to peel navel oranges, but they turned out to be
round orange(difficult to peel-- skin does not come out easily)

Does it not depend on what type of tree we plant? Is it depending on
what kind of pollination happened?
(from which tree it was pollinated?)
thanks for any info!

wrote:
We planted an orange tree (we bought it from Home Depot) It was
Washington Navel Orange.
(4 years back)
It gave 4-5 fruits for the first time this year. We were expecting it
to be sweet and easy to peel navel oranges, but they turned out to be
round orange(difficult to peel-- skin does not come out easily)

Does it not depend on what type of tree we plant? Is it depending on
what kind of pollination happened?
(from which tree it was pollinated?)
thanks for any info!


The pollination is irrelavent. Citrus is apomictic, which means it will
even set fruit and even form viable seed without any pollination at all.

The quality of the fuit depends more on nutrients and weather.

Be sure the fruiting branches are indeed from above the graft. The
rootstock might produce oranges, too; but they will tend to be sour,
seedy, and tight-skinned. If you have any branches from below the graft
and also some from above the graft, remove those below. If you have
only branches below the graft, return the plant to Home Depot.

--
David E. Ross
Climate: California Mediterranean
Sunset Zone: 21 -- interior Santa Monica Mountains with some ocean
influence (USDA 10a, very close to Sunset Zone 19)
Gardening pages at http://www.rossde.com/garden/

wrote in message
oups.com...
We planted an orange tree (we bought it from Home Depot) It was
Washington Navel Orange.
(4 years back)
It gave 4-5 fruits for the first time this year. We were expecting it
to be sweet and easy to peel navel oranges, but they turned out to be
round orange(difficult to peel-- skin does not come out easily)

Does it not depend on what type of tree we plant? Is it depending on
what kind of pollination happened?
(from which tree it was pollinated?)
thanks for any info!

Might not be a Navel. Is there a navel at the blossom end of the fruit?
Was there an ID label on the pot? HD (and others) often have citrus where
the ID tag on the plant differs from the label on the pot.

Olin

g'day,

no absolute expert on citrus but as we manage to get good sweet fruits
off of all of ours, i'm also going with growing conditions, could need
some ph adjustment as well as a boost of nutrient around the drip line
use any sort of manure, and heavily mulch with green type hay mulches
even sugar cane mulch.

and like a lot of citrus they do like a cold spell over the fruit as
it matures, those that get frost over them are the sweetest, but you
can still get good fruit with more attention to nutrition.

they will also like a good deep watering at least once a month.

i would suggest a layer of manure from say 8"s out from the trunk to
just beyond the drip line, then cover that with mushroom compost app'
4"s depth each, then at least 10"s of hay to extend beyond that line a
little and keep renewing the hay as it breaks down.

ours also do well with watering from our grey water when needed, but i
also save my wee water for ours as well and they get 1/2 bucket each
twice a week of this wee fresh water mix (by that i mean i top up the
bucket to full so at least 1/2 the bucket will be wee).

using the above method we grew great juicy citrus that got only
available rainfall in a medium rainfall area when we were in rural.

if you have heavy clay add a good dose of gypsum under the above and i
suppsoe without a ph test a handfull of dolomite won't do a lot of
damage.

also find they do better on western aspects usually they have the
extremes of micro climate.


On 20 Feb 2007 14:29:01 -0800, wrote:

snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.lensgarden.com.au/