Orlando Orange Company
Season
November into July, if you stagger
Yard fruit follows the home-landscape citrus guide's maturity table. Navels eat or juice from fall. Valencia is the late juice orange. Grocery citrus in Florida stores tracks winter into spring, then the box is often mixed origin. Read the sticker. The tree in the yard has a named cultivar and a freeze date.
What hangs on the tree
Early fruit from about November. Midseason Pineapple or Midsweet in winter. Valencia late, into summer if the tree holds. That is the home-landscape citrus guide's stagger, not a u-pick calendar. Gardening Solutions adds use: navel for fresh eating or juice, Hamlin for volume juice, Valencia as the king of juice oranges. CREC Selecting a Citrus Tree puts Hamlin in December through January and Valencia from about mid-February.
| Place | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Orange, Seminole, Osceola yards | Dooryard sweet orange on the home-landscape citrus guide's table, limited by freeze |
| Grocery | Florida citrus is real in winter and spring. Summer boxes are often shipped |
The grocery box
Florida still packs commercial citrus. Greening cut the old volume. A navel in July is usually not a local harvest. Valencia in May can be. Gardening Solutions still lists Florida as a juice state. The sticker on the box is the origin line, not the yard tree. Hypothesis: a Central Florida backyard Valencia in May is the paper's late window if freeze and HLB left the tree standing. A summer navel in the store is someone else's grove.
Questions
When is Valencia ripe?
The home-landscape citrus guide lists Valencia March through June. Taste beats color.
Does a freeze end the season?
It can end the fruit and damage the tree. The home-landscape citrus guide is blunt about historically cold sites.
How to read a month
Hamlin and navel are the early fruit on the home-landscape citrus paper. They hang from about November. Midseason types such as Pineapple and Midsweet fill winter. Valencia is the late sweet orange, March into June if the tree holds. Color is a poor clock. Taste the juice. A green-tinged Valencia in May can be ready. A pretty navel in July is usually someone else's grove.
Greening cut Florida's old volume. The grocery sticker is the honest origin line. Florida still packs commercial citrus in winter and spring. Summer boxes mix origin. A dooryard tree does not follow that truck. It follows cultivar, freeze, and whether the site regularly drops below the paper's comfort.
Orange, Seminole, and Osceola yards sit on the warm side of the peninsula and still freeze some years. A hard freeze ends fruit and can damage wood. Replant dates belong on the grow page, not as a promise here. If the tree is named Valencia, wait for the late window. If it is a navel, do not wait until baseball season.
Sources
- Citrus Culture in the Home Landscape (HS132), UF/IFAS
- Citrus, UF/IFAS Gardening Solutions
- Selecting a Citrus Tree, UF/IFAS CREC