Week of November 10

When should I pick my citrus trees in my Florida Garden?  All the citrus are turning orange or yellow.  The Key limes have a yellow hue and one turned bright yellow and fell off, now stored in the refrigerator.  The Meyer lemons are half yellow/half green.  The Kumquats are nicely orange but still quite hard to the touch.  A few grapefruit have turned yellow but are also very hard.  The Ponkan, Honey Murcott, and Tangelo tangerines are just starting to show some orange.  This leaves us with the Satsuma tangerine, which was loaded with baseball-sized orange fruit.  I squeezed them often, thinking they were still not ready.  Two nights ago, something ate about 20 fruit right off the tree!  Yesterday, I wrapped the tree with bird netting and around midnight, went to inspect my defenses.  Sure enough, enmeshed in the netting was a young raccoon.  I spotlighted him with my lantern, causing him to thrash about and finally break loose and dash off into the woods.  My conclusion is that a whole family of raccoons were to blame.  This morning, the rest of the fruit are fine, but I picked 8 ripe fruit to be safe.  So, in Florida, I do not choose when to pick the citrus, the varmits make that decision for me.