At the end of last year, we signed the purchase of your farm in Portugal. We visited the place just a few days before Christmas and it was a very nice surprise to find out all the fruits in the Orange, Tangerine, and Lemon trees. Picking the fruit from the tree and tasting them was so refreshing, it is hard to describe the different flavors I was able to feel. We are so used to "supermarket" food, harvested way before ripe conditions and kept on fridges, when you taste a fruit picking it from the tree, it is as if you are enjoying a completely different product.
There are four orange trees and two lemon ones in the property, but only one tiny clementine tree. Those are the ones I loved the most, and I decided to make an experiment when we got back home with three boxes of produce we distributed among family and friends. I decided to try to use some seeds to grow new trees and plant them on the farm. You can read about it in this post.
I planted the seeds using a moisture paper towel the day after Christmas last year, December 26th. After a few weeks, the seeds started germinating and I moved them into pots. I started with 6, one of them did not grow from the moisture paper towel and another one died after I transplanted into their individual baby pots. Here's how they looked back then before the second one died.
These pictures are showing the progress of the four little guys who survived 5 months after I started the experiment. I kept them inside the house during the winter and moved them to the backyard as soon as spring started bringing more and more sun and temperature started rising. There is still a long way to go before I take them back to Portugal and plant them in the land, and even then, there will still be a high risk of failure, but taking care of them and contemplating how they keep growing is a complete pleasure. I cannot imagine the pleasure I will feel the day I can taste their first fruit.
