Grapefruit, limes, mandarins and purple broccoli

December is a month of transition for fruit as pomegranates have wrapped up and persimmons are coming to an end but the citrus is just starting to appear.

The cold weather the last few weeks has changed the color of the grapefruit and mandarins so much that we have been checking them weekly to see when they are ready to harvest.

The simplest way is a taste test but we have also are using a Brix Refractometer to check the sugar levels on them to make sure there is some sweetness there.

Yesterday we checked and concluded that the Melogold grapefruit is ready to be harvested and we will have it today at the Davis Farmers Market and we will have the Page mandarins beginning on Saturday.

There are three varieties of grapefruit on the property that we lease with two of them being white fleshed. The most well known white fleshed one is Oro Blanco, which we have, but Melogold is very similar in flavor.

Melogold is always the first grapefruit of the season and can have a short season depending on if we get rain that knocks the fruit off the trees.

It is a hybrid grapefruit between an acidless pummelo and a Marsh grapefruit. They have a mellow flavor with low acidity and a delightful blend of sweet and tart.

In addition to the Page mandarins at the Saturday Davis Farmers Market we will have some Bearss limes.

Page mandarins are a cross between a Clementine mandarin and a Minneola tangelo that was first created in 1942.

They are a small mandarin that has some resemblance to a sweet orange with their rich and sweet flavor. They are very juicy and easy to eat an entire one before you know it even though it is harder to peel than a satsuma.

Bearss limes have a tart, juicy and classical lime flavor that has made them the most popular variety of lime. They are often called Persian limes and compared to Key limes they are less acidic and slightly sweeter which gives them a tangy and balanced taste.

Normally limes are harvested green but we have let these ones ripen so they are yellow.

Along with the citrus adding more color to the stand last week we started harvesting Purple Broccoli. It is very similar to the regular green broccoli but you want to eat the purple stem in addition to the purple broccoli florets.

The purple florets don’t change color when cooked and the outside of the stem remains purple throughout the cooking process. Many people find it to be sweeter than the green broccoli and the purple color means it has more anthocyanins which are thought to be beneficial for health.

The continued foggy, cold weather has slowed down the growth of all the plants on the farm combined with being 11 days away from the shortest day of the year. Luckily most of the veggies have done almost all their growing already but for some of the last plantings we did they still need to get bigger.

Once we get into January and the temperatures rise along with longer sunny days everything will have a jump in growth thanks to the fog keeping the soil moist.

This is a time where we are working on getting ahead on the weeding because they will be growing rapidly in the new year while we have lots of more tasks than now including big weekly seedings in the greenhouse.