Knowing that there was to be freezing temperatures overnight, Damsel and I decided to start picking the ripe lemons from our “orchard” yesterday – yes, we did it on New Year’s Day. We picked about an estimated three hundred of them before we knocked off for the rest of the day.
We stored the lemons in the wheelbarrow (image above – click to enlarge) in the garage overnight due to the probable freezing temperatures, but, as it turned out, the low was just about exactly the freezing point which wouldn’t have damaged the lemons. The forecast was for a “hard” freeze but the only effects were to freeze the top layer of water in the birdbaths and in the rain bucket. Dogs water dish under cover in the patio and in their wading pool did not freeze.
Despite having picked a couple gross of lemons from the tree, there are dozens more to pick (image below). I checked on the unpicked lemons this morning and none appeared to be damaged, which is a good thing. We plan on using many of the lemons for our annual batch of Limoncello and give the rest away to neighbors and the local food bank.
Since there are a lot of lemons still to be picked, we will probably not get to that until later this week. I have a couple of appointments, one for lab work and another with the dermatologist for my usual skin problems, but we will likely be able to work around those and get the pickin’ into our routine.
Visitors to our humble abode are likely to be presented with a complimentary bottle of our custom Limoncello.
I remember our lemon tree in Long Beach. I never knew they could be so prolific, with several 5-gal buckets of lemons per “crop”. And they just kept growing! Slowed down some in the Winter, but we still got lemons.
And it smelled wonderful when it was blooming!
As we were picking the lemons on Saturday, there were still many open blossoms and little flower pods still on the tree. We’ve seen winter blossoms before but they haven’t thus far produced spring or summer lemons but the aroma they produce is still very nice.