Thursday, July 05, 2012

The Citrus Tree Project

I have 5 citrus trees in my yard. First names are Harry, Fred, Tom etc. with employee numbers of one through five and Common names of Mystery, Mystery, Mystery, Grapefruit and Lemon.


The three mystery citrus trees bear fruit that looks like this:

(Update 11-July-2012: According to the guy from the nursery the fruit from trees 1, 2, and 3 are small because the trees haven't been watered for a long time.)

Tree One, fruit is about the size of a golf ball:
(Update 11-July-2012: Most probably a Valencia Orange.)


Tree two, fruit is about 3/4 the size of a golf ball:
(Update 11-July-2012: Most probably a Tangelo.)


Tree three, fruit is about 3/4 the size of a golf ball:
(Update 11-July-2012: Most probably a Valencia Orange.)


Tree four is a grapefruit tree, most of it has been cut away at the base but there are a couple of small branches/trunks left and the are extremely fruitful considering what the base of the tree looks like:


Tree five is a lemon tree.

The first part of my project is to identify what types of trees number one through three are. I have tasted the fruit from all of them and it is terrible. Probably some of the sourest most disgusting citrus I have ever tasted. If anybody can identify this fruit I'd be most grateful.

The second part of my project is to replace these trees with consumable fruits. I'm thinking a Navel and Valencia orange, maybe a Cara Cara Orange, and a lime tree. Tree number five, the lemon, will stay.

My initial thought was to cut down and dig up the old trees but I have since started to read up on grafting. If I can, I'll leave the trunks as they are, remove all the branches of the current tree and then graft on branches from tastier citrus fruit trees.

So I'm looking for advice on how to do this? Also, I need the tastier citrus branch to graft on, does anyone have a citrus tree with really tastier fruit in the greater Phoenix area that can spare me a couple of buds, branches or scions from these trees?

1 comment:

Guy Ellis said...

Looks like I'm going to be bailing on my tree grafting project after discovering that the fruit from those trees is bitter and sour and small because the trees haven't been watered in a long time and the trees are most likely two Valencia Oranges and a Tangelo.

I'll probably pull the Grapefruit tree and replace it with a Navel Orange.