Superior postharvest handling qualities
Sat, 27 Jan 2007
Growers in the Indian River region once relied upon sour orange rootstock to support their grafted fruit.
Citrus Rootstock Usage in the Indian River Region - "Sour orange rootstock is considered unsurpassed for maintaining fruit quality, and also is widely believed to provide superior postharvest handling qualities."
When I was young, a family friend owned groves which were no longer financially viable. Many trees still bore sweet, juicy fruit, long after the groves were abandoned. Every season for several years, I and my friends picked a truckload of fruit from those weedy groves. Because the trees had not been tended, some had completely reverted to the sour orange stock, while others bore sweet and sour on the same tree, depending on the branch you picked from.
We left the sour oranges on the tree. They would later fall and ferment, to become a wild hog's ambrosia. Sweet citrus was also left to rot. A few hour's harvest yielded more fruit than we could distribute to friends and family, so we only took the best of the several varieties available.
What I've just written is a slice of local lore. It's also a metaphor about a project I'm working on.
A few Florida bloggers have seen the project, which is now in alpha testing. It's not quite ready for the world, so they are respecting a press embargo until the site launches. Last year, when I published the Florida blog directory, I had an overwhelmingly positive response. An updated and expanded Florida blog directory would be a logical guess as to what I'm working on, but it is much more than that.
You can be an alpha tester. To qualify, you must be:
- curious about what Florida bloggers are writing,
- willing to respect an embargo on publishing information prior to the site's launch.
Want to know more? Contact: dave AT spacecoastweb.org
Update: Announcing sourstock.com
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