GROWING THE BEST ORANGES / WASHINGTON NAVEL ORANGE
seedless and absolutely delicious let's
look at growing the Washington Naval
orange so grew this tree in Irvine
California zone 10 and as you can see
the tree is early visible and this is a
1 year old tree that we got from our
local garden center and this semi-dwarf
washington navel orange tree grows to a
height of about seven to ten feet and I
always recommend that you grow a dwarf
or semi dwarf trees in your garden they
do not take up a lot of space and they
do produce a lot of fruit
now let's talk a little bit about the
history of this plant this Washington
navel orange was actually imported from
a city called Bahia in Brazil and then
sent out to different states in the
United States of America now this was
back in the 1870s from all the trees
that were sent out the ones in
California thrived and produced
delicious oranges that became an instant
success and the one person is
responsible for cultivating this orange
variety in Southern California is ELISA
Tibbets she was the one who cultivated
took care of these plants and greatly
contributed to the part of Southern
California that is known as Orange
County today so let's look at the first
three years of growing this plant you
need to choose a nice sunny spot to grow
your Washington navel orange tree just
like any other citrus tree it needs a
lot of sunlight and it needs at least
about six to eight hours of sunlight
every day
now the plant will start flowering
somewhere around spring which is about
March or April and then it will produce
fruits that you can harvest starting
October so it flowers in spring and then
you can start harvesting your fruits
from October through about January so
depending on when you want to harvest
the fruits you can plant to grow
different varieties of oranges for
example there are other varieties like
Caracara which produce fruits earlier
this plant produces fruits in the winter
season so as you can see here this plant
grows pretty much like a bush not like a
full-fledged tree and that's the
characteristic of dwarf or semi dwarf
trees now for the first 1 2 3 years I
would say like at least the first 4
years you need to make sure that you
follow a very good fertilizer schedule
for your orange trees and I have
explained the fertilizer schedule for
fruit trees in one of my previous videos
I do recommend that you check it out
but in general what you need to do is
start feeding your plants with a good
organic fertilizer somewhere around the
spring season and then at least add
fertilizer about two to three times
during the growing season so that's a
good ballpark to remember it's very
important that you do add fertilizer
once you plant or you get your tree and
plant it at least for the first four
years so as you can see here the fruits
look pretty good they're large fruits
and they're called navel because of
unique mutations that occurs in this
plant and I'll show you that when we cut
open the fruit you can see here the
fruits are pretty large they'd be about
370 grams or about 13 ounces
and that's a pretty good-sized fruit
pretty large pretty sweet and very
delicious
and as you can see here the plant
produces these heavy fruits so you might
see that the branches are drooping down
once the fruits become heavy but the
branches are pretty strong they don't
really break they can hold the weight of
all these fruits so very pretty looking
fruits they have a nice thick rind and
taste wise I think these are one of the
best citrus trees you can grow in your
garden the oranges are very delicious
very sweet they are seedless and I
highly recommend that you try growing
this orange variety now this orange
variety will not tolerate a complete
frost freeze so I recommend that if you
do get a freeze in your area you plant
them in containers so that you can get
them home indoors during the chilly
winter months now as far as watering
goes it really depends on the
temperatures in your area but citrus do
like to be dry in between waterings so
if your plant is small you can get away
with watering every two to three times a
week and as your plant grows up and
grows bigger you need to limit the
watering to maybe about once a week or
twice a week really depending on how hot
it gets in your area so as you can see
here this plant produces more and more
fruits as time goes by and will give you
very delicious oranges once the tree is
established which takes about two years
or so now this plant is seedless so it
cannot be propagated via seeds and it
can be propagated by grafting and by
buds so that is the only way to
propagate this plant now a lot of you
have asked me if there is any problem
growing seedless varieties and the
answer is no seedless plants do occur in
nature they are not GMOs they are not
genetically modified they are perfectly
healthy plants that you can grow and eat
and the reason they do not have seeds is
because they have evolved to this stage
for example even the banana had seeds
once upon a time but as we started
cultivating the plant the plant evolved
and it now gives us bananas that are
seedless one of the insects that really
devastates this plant is the leaf miner
and as you can see here we did have some
leaf miner damaged very early on when we
got this plant and this is especially
true when the plant is producing new
leaves the leaf miners like to attack
these new leaves and then just
completely destroy the plant now on
mature trees the leaf miner doesn't
really have much effect but if you have
a small tree and it's affected by leaf
miners there is a very easy solution to
take care of your leaf miner attack
all you do is take a pump sprayer and
then mix spinosad and mineral oil and
then spray your plants spray your plants
very well
follow a schedule please do refer to my
video on tackling the leaf miner attack
on citrus plants and you will get an
idea of how to deal with this problem
now make sure when you're spraying that
you spray the entire plant the underside
of the leaves as well and also a little
bit on the ground where the leaf miner
adults lay their eggs and they should do
a good job of taking care of your leaf
miner attack on your citrus plants now a
lot of YouTube viewers have given me
feedback that they need to see how the
fruit looks like whenever I am making
these videos so here it is this is how
the Washington Naval orange looks like
and when you cut open the orange you can
clearly see the navel which is pretty
much like a small fruit at the bottom of
the orange you can clearly see that in
the cross-section and as I mentioned
earlier this is due to the mutation of
this plant which produces this small
fruit at the bottom of this fruit and it
just the way the plant is this is a
wonderful plant it produces oranges that
are sweet delicious and prolific and
seedless as well so here's one more and
during the harvest season you can
harvest a lot of oranges from this plant
this is an excellent plant to grow in
your home garden and looking at the
cross-section this is a beautiful orange
extremely beautiful seedless and very
good to eat so there we have it folks
that was the episode on growing the
Washington naval orange I hope I covered
all the aspects of growing this tree in
your garden
