Dan Seymore puts the finishing touches on the stainless steel fruit take outs he built for the new fruit grading system at Lindcove.  These will allow the researchers to evaluate the fruit by any chosen parameter and then they are returned to a central belt where they can be loaded into bins.

Frost protection kicked in again this week.  Hopefully the rain will arrive soon and give everyone some rest.
 
If you want to study frost protection in detail, I highly recommend reading the Focus on Frost Protection issue of Sep/Oct 2011 Citrograph.
http://www.citrusresearch.org/frost_issue

At Lindcove we had 14 nights of wind machine activity during December to protect the citrus fruit as temperatures hovered around 26 degrees.  The citrus fruit is looking good and we are glad to get a break from frost protection.

Lindcove REC had 90 growers attend the Friday session and 250 homeowners attend the Saturday session of the Fruit Display and Tasting event last week.  More than 160 varieties of citrus were available for tasting.   The homeowners walked away with fruit in their bags at the end of the session (> 10,000 pieces of fruit disappeared in 20 minutes) and a new appreciation for the many citrus varieties available.  We thank Mikeal Roose and Tim Williams for demonstrating their seedless mandarin varieties, Mary Lu Arpaia and Dave Obenland for testing the citrus taste buds of the consumers in their booths, Farm Advisor Neil O'Connell for providing horticultural advice, Tracy Kahn for giving a walking tour of the demonstration trees, the Master Gardener Program for assisting with teaching and fruit cutting, and of course the staff of Lindcove who made it all happen.