Each long Melbourne winter I delight in seeing the fruit on our orange tree glow in the back yard as though lit from within. In the looming dusk it’s as if the tree’s stored sunlight is sending a promising message to the waning day: despite the night, tomorrow will come.
As the rest of our garden’s deciduous species become skeletal, the leaves of the contrarian Mediterranean sweet navel orange tree remain green and glossy, and its fruit swells and ripens until, at the winter solstice, they reach their sweet delicious peak.
It seems wondrous that the tree spends the summer gathering the energy to create sugars and vitamins that are sorely needed at a time of scarcity, six months later. Bringing new meaning to the term “companion planting”, the orange tree helps brighten my spirit through another dark season of the soul.
Caring for this benevolent companion is fairly simple too. Once past the early bitter stage, edible fruit will keep on the branches for at least three months. I apply citrus fertiliser and trace elements in September and February, and our chickens contribute their share. I occasionally spray with white oil for scale and curl-aphid, and immediately remove any gall wasp.
The tree faces north and likes having its roots warmed in winter by the low sun, but in summer requires heavy mulching to retain the moisture needed to grow the next winter crop. Even without a back yard, you can easily emulate the French kings and grow a prolific orange tree in a container on a terrace or balcony.
A larger threat to our tree is our local population of ringtail possums, who like to strip the oranges of their rind. (Perhaps they already know what science has found: that orange peel contains potent anti-cancer compounds.)
In response to possum damage, I once made the terrible error of spraying the whole tree with bitter pine oil as a flavour deterrent. As anyone who has walked along the sterile floor of a conifer forest should know, pine oil is a toxin to most flowering plants. I almost killed my friend, and only saved it by pruning back so hard that I had to wait three years for the next viable crop.
Raymond Chandler’s sardonic private eye, Philip Marlowe, once observed a single light glowing in the hills above Los Angeles, “like the last orange”. That sight must have represented a moment of solace for someone who had dwelled too long in the shadowlands of sunny California, and each season, as a tribute to Chandler, I leave one last orange on my tree.
Though past its prime I keep it there for the visual cheer it brings me. When harvested it will have a slightly oxidised, marmalade flavour, but I’ll still pick it gratefully, doubly so for the tree’s sudden burst of orange blossom that is the signature of spring. Those fragrant festoons with their early shift of keen bees celebrate the change of season, the end of cold times, and the promise of another crop of sheer delight next year.
In the rose light of dawn that last orange has an almost fluorescent glow, and when I head out across the dewy lawn to pick it, night chilled, for breakfast, I’ll be quietly pleased that the small investment I made three decades ago still literally bears fruit. Happy tree, happy me. Thank you, tree. Thank you.
