- Author: Elizabeth E Grafton-Cardwell
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
- Author: Elizabeth E Grafton-Cardwell
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.
- Author: Elizabeth E Grafton-Cardwell
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.
- Author: Elizabeth E Grafton-Cardwell
Friday Dec 9, from 10 am-1 pm is the Lindcove fruit display and tasting. In addition Mary Lu Arpaia and David Obenland will have a sensory tasting booth to collect data on your preferences and Tracy Kahn will conduct a walking tour of the citrus variety demonstration block. Farm Advisors Craig Kallsen and Neil O'Connell will be present to answer questions and Mikeal Roose will be available to discuss new low-seeded varieties developed by his program. If for some reason you can not attend on Friday, the fruit tasting portion of the program will be open to the public from 9 am to noon on Saturday as well. Please join us!
- Author: Elizabeth E Grafton-Cardwell
This week we are running China S9 mandarins on the new Compac grading system at Lindcove. Dr. Mikeal Roose (Dept Botany and Plant Sciences, UC Riverside) is studying the impact of various rootstocks on fruit number, size and quality of this variety. The new grading system can measure color, texture and blemish and will help to determine which rootstocks produce the best quality fruit for the Tulare area. In this video clip, the fruit is being counted, sized, weighed and evaluated for color, texture and blemish by the cameras and farther down the line is sorted into bins for further analysis.