Tuscany garden
Because of my love for Italy, I came across my first citrus trees in the early 1980s. The trees were then in an old overgrown garden on Capo Vaticano in Calabria. The owner, an 80-year-old Pittore from Tropea, saw that I regretted the trees and carelessly signified “prendere tutti” to me. In fact, he was astonished when I happily accepted his offer, cut back the long branches of two of the trees and dug them up with a spade on the day of my return home. I tied the two orange trees, with the root ball well packed, to the roof of my mobile home, which was then still a Mercedes 207 panel van, and brought them to Kressbronn. The next year I took two more orange trees in the same way. Unfortunately, another year later the garden was leveled and the remaining orange trees felled.
At that time nobody in this country knew Capo Vaticano and Tropea. Today Tropea is one of the most popular holiday destinations in Calabria.
The first two orange trees after about a year in Kressbronn. The new branches sprout.
The same trees in 2019, both blood oranges.
170 cm high without pot, crown 150 cm
Without pot 230 cm high, crown 160 cm
Over the years I have bought other citrus trees and other Mediterranean plants in nurseries in Italy and Sicily and have grown many from cuttings myself.
Today there are a total of 15 lemon, orange, mandarin, grapefruit and kumquat trees in my garden. The four old orange trees are now probably 60 years old.
Citrus plants in pots have been popular with us for several years and are now available at affordable prices in every garden market. When I was tending these plants in large pots in the garden 40 years ago, citrus trees in this country were only known from collections in orangeries or from vacation trips.
Depending on the weather, the citrus trees spend the winter from the end of November to March close together with olives, star jasmine, various palms, mallow trees and other southern potted plants in a greenhouse and in my turtle house.
The citrus fruits bloom, fruit and ripen all year round, with the main harvest time being in winter and spring. During this time I harvest fruits almost every day and press them into organic citrus juice.
Orange tree, at least 60 years old.
Various orange trees, grapefruit and kumauat.
Orange blossom
Different lemon trees.
Lemon blossom
Oranges
Blood oranges
Lemons
The blood orange is responsible for the red color of my freshly squeezed organic orange juice.
Onset of winter on Easter Sunday, April 8th, 2012 and April 28th, 2017.
Tangerine harvest in Kressbronn
When the small, round fruits on my tangerine tree have got their last orange-red color from the cold, it is time to harvest the tangerines.
Unlike oranges and lemons, mandarins cannot be stored on the tree and must therefore be harvested and eaten quickly after they have ripened.
Mandarins are considered to be the oldest known citrus fruits. They originally come from China and have been cultivated in the Mediterranean for a long time. In ancient China, the fruits were only reserved for the emperor and high officials, the mandarins.
Like all citrus plants, mandarins can also be cultivated very well as container plants in our latitudes. I bought my mandarin tree in Sicily over 30 years ago. In the meantime the tree (without the pot) is two meters high and the trunk has a diameter of seven centimeters.
Mandarins are low in acid, are the sweetest citrus fruits around and are rich in healthy ingredients.
The harvest, 8 kg of mandarins.
The peel sits loosely on the juicy pulp and is therefore easy to peel.
The small green mandarins for the next harvest are already hanging on the tree.
Flowers
Different colored oleander bushes and trees.
Mallow, Abutilon. The turtles like to eat the flowers.
Bougainvillea, the purple bracts envelop the small white flowers.
Solanum tree, bush and blossoms
Banana trees and blossom with small bananas.
Mediterranean cypress trees in summer and winter.