CITRUS
To ensure fruit harvest over winter, we also grow blood oranges. Our citrus will be in flower around the same time as our apples – in October, so we have quite a smorgasbord for the bees at that time of year!
Harvest times for our Blood oranges
is August/September
Any surplus Blood Oranges are made into marmalade due, which we started making in 2017 due to a surplus of fruit.
Blood orange info:
Arnold Blood oranges
Blood oranges are packed with anthocyanins, the red flavonoid pigments that give certain fruits their intense colour and incredible antioxidant properties.
Blood Oranges contain extremely high levels of Vitamin C. It’s a great way to start the day!
Did you know that the outer appearance of the blood oranges is actually a reaction to environmental stress? That means not all blood oranges you buy will have that beautiful red colour and just because some of them don’t look like blood oranges doesn’t mean that they aren’t!
The more frost we have over winter, the more intense red colour we get on the blood oranges. This means that for blood oranges grown near the coast, they will struggle to get the dark red colour due to the region being more frost free.
APPLES
While southern NSW is not ideal for growing apples (a little on the warm side) we have a small number of apples trees that do quite well. We grow Jonathans, Granny Smiths and Pink Ladies and as with our stone fruit, we let them ripen on the tree ensuring that they are full of flavour.
Harvest times for apples:
Jonathans – late February/March
Granny Smiths – April
Pink Ladies – May
We never treat or store our apples in the cool room, they will all store well at room temperature for a number of weeks. Tree ripened apples have a sweet aroma, which is lacking in fruit that has been picked before it is ripe and kept in controlled atmosphere storage.