Tangerines
Oranges
Limes
Lemons
Grape Fruits
We bought one-foot tall citrus seedlings from an institute of agriculture nursery manned by government officials. With instructions on how to plant them, we dug deep enough holes considering that the terrain was stony; put in our own compost mixed with topsoil and planted them and mulched them immediately.
With the seasonal rains and our watering them during dry seasons, they flourished and in the fourth year, we started seeing a few flowers develop on the twigs. By then they were like four feet tall.
In the fifth year, there were many more flowers and bees were busy visiting the flowers. Some flowers fell off and died while some blossomed and developed into tiny fruits. We ate our first fruits that year from all the surviving trees.
To our amazement, this phenomenon was repeating itself three times a year in that while we had fruits ready to eat, some fruits were in midlife while flowers were forming again. The trees were so heavy laden that when the wind was blowing, it looked like many branches would break off due to the weight of the fruits on them but it never happened.
During the heaviest rainy season, flowers were so many that we were scared of hanging around them because of challenges from bees and pollens flying all over. Birds too loved the trees and many tiny ones built their nests inside the branches, laid eggs and hatched young ones.
The orange fruits were the biggest in size followed by lemons then tangerines and limes came last. They were all very juicy and a joy to eat or use as an ingredient in making some dishes.
Twenty-six plants survived out of a total of thirty-nine planted originally with at least four of each type of citrus. The area being stony made the roots find it difficult to penetrate deeper for better survival and that is why a third of the seedlings dried up.
The withering and dying were no surprise to us but we were determined to grow and nurture them anyway.
The lemon trees were tallest, followed by tangerines, then oranges then finally limes.
Lime trees were the bushiest followed by tangerines, then oranges and finally lemons.
We thought that we were planting them just for our use, but it turned out that the fruits were too many for our use and we ended up selling most of them for the well-needed cash.
We groomed the tress by pruning the low hanging branches during the period that the trees had less fruit otherwise it would have meant destroying many flowers, young fruits or fruits about to mature.
Goats loved eating the leaves of the citrus trees and we gave them the trimmed branches to enjoy on such days. Whatever fruit that happened to be on the branches that could not be eaten or used because of immaturity, was given to the cows.
We weeded around the trees often to remove any weeds and sometimes, we tied sheep in this particular orchard to eat the grass around but never goats because of their destructive nature. We put manure around the trees like every four months especially just around the onset of the long and short rains.
The trees formed beautiful canopies during the hot seasons and we enjoyed sitting under them. Even sheep loved resting under the shades.
We ate fresh citrus fruits and drank fresh citrus juice all the year round.
We had no disease problem with the citrus trees apart from occasional disturbance from some type of tiny black insect or fly like settling on some sides of some of the trees and making the leaves and fruit dirty looking. We sprayed a solution of ashes mixed with chili peppers or Neem tree byproducts solution on such areas and the insects shifted elsewhere.
The region was dominated by citrus fruits.