Oranges?
Seasoned HDF Member
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 27,096
Likes: 4,673
From: Frozelandia, Minnysota
Shame to hear this. I haven't been down there in over 20 years, and 1971 before that. Back then there were roadside vendors selling bags of oranges to tourists, bigger than I've ever seen elsewhere, and wonderful flavor. Typical grocery store oranges were just sorry compared to those. I remember roads lined with oranges that fell out of the semi trailers hauling them, weren't supposed to pick them up, but people did. I didn't know that at first, got back to the folks I was visiting and they told me it was a good thing I didn't get caught with a couple dozen in the car. 
Road Warrior
Joined: Sep 2016
Posts: 1,952
Likes: 903
From: South Florida (Ft Myers area)
Even in Florida crops have a season. You should start seeing oranges this month, July and August would be off season for oranges.
Here is a season guide....https://www.fdacs.gov/Consumer-Resou...rops-in-Season
Here is a season guide....https://www.fdacs.gov/Consumer-Resou...rops-in-Season
Thread Starter
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Club Member
Joined: Dec 2014
Posts: 10,734
Likes: 3,755
From: SWFL
Even in Florida crops have a season. You should start seeing oranges this month, July and August would be off season for oranges.
Here is a season guide....https://www.fdacs.gov/Consumer-Resou...rops-in-Season
Here is a season guide....https://www.fdacs.gov/Consumer-Resou...rops-in-Season
Tourer
Joined: Feb 2009
Posts: 343
Likes: 224
From: Viera, FL
The groves die out naturally if disease doesn't kill them out first. Most of the time it's too expensive to re-plant as subsidies are no longer around for the AG industry. Labor prices are a bitch, municipalities are limiting fertilizer and herbicides, and water permits are harder and harder to get, etc. It's not that grove owners want to sell out to developers, some time they don't have a choice. I've had all the long time, old family groves in my area just call it quits and their groves are just sitting empty now. Its a shame. I won't even get into what foreign imports are doing to the industry.
On the bright side, as someone mentioned, as it begins to cool off you will see more citrus and more OJ.
Tim
On the bright side, as someone mentioned, as it begins to cool off you will see more citrus and more OJ.
Tim
Ultimate HDF Member
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 9,254
Likes: 283
From: Lake City, Florida (Native)
Florida Citrus will never be what it once was .. Coming from an old Florida Native where the Villages are now was once mostly all orange groves .. Far better money in Real Estate than raising Citrus Crops ..
Seasoned HDF Member
Joined: May 2012
Posts: 32,934
Likes: 36,027
From: Carlsbad, CA
But, rats would come from miles away to eat them from the inside. Id sit in the yard at night with my pellet gun, and a 6 pack..and blast the f-kers, my wife always wondered why there were pellets in the oranges.
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Seasoned HDF Member
Joined: Jun 2015
Posts: 10,276
Likes: 7,756
From: West Central FL
The citrus industry down here made a lot of enemies back in 1990 when it was reported that a Medfly was spotted somewhere in Hillsborough Co. The damn citrus moguls convinced the State to allow wholesale aerial spraying by tanker planes loaded with Malathion poison. They sprayed it over everything and everybody for about three months. It got so bad that there were actual news reports of some planes returning from their "missions" with bullet holes from small arms ground fire!
Grand HDF Member
Joined: Jul 2013
Posts: 4,752
Likes: 3,271
From: West Central Florida
I was riding in the Lake County area yesterday and the groves that are left are thriving.
I lived by the Golden Gem processing plant years ago and at night the smell was nothing but citrus. Nothing like a ride through the groves when the orange blossoms are blooming. Lake Wales still has a lot of citrus groves.
I lived by the Golden Gem processing plant years ago and at night the smell was nothing but citrus. Nothing like a ride through the groves when the orange blossoms are blooming. Lake Wales still has a lot of citrus groves.