Although we are in early August and we are not selling oranges and tangerines does not mean that we are not working. Now is one of the most crucial moments for the next season of the best fruit of the Mediterranean. It is the time to make every effort to have the best oranges and tangerines .
In these months of maximum temperatures, and especially this hot summer, is when more hours of watering have to be carried out. With the heat also come the pests and we must control them. The red spider, the fly and other pests that can harm the quality of oranges and tangerines. But do not worry, there are many years of experience and many hours of work that make these problems we have under control.
The force of nature is what we cannot control and this is what is going to mean that next season there will be very little quality fruit for sale. Two environmental factors have conditioned this year's production.
More than 40º in Valencia on May 14th
It was only one day. The news and the media spoke of it as an exceptional day. As an anomalous situation that raised temperatures above 40 degrees in much of the Valencian Community. This phenomenon was produced by a mass of hot air coming from North Africa but we also had to add that the wind was blowing from the interior towards the coast, so the feeling of heat was even greater because we did not have the air coming from the sea as a regulator of the temperature.
This day of extreme temperatures in the month of May made the orange tree, at the time when the fruit is smaller and more vulnerable, to "cope" with the high temperatures, got rid of much of the fruit throwing it to the ground. A sharp decline in production that has meant that there are very few oranges and tangerines on the trees of the Valencian Community.
Those of us who live obsessed with the weather and knew how hot it was going to be, we significantly increased the hours of irrigation in our fields so that the trees would have enough energy to feed the fruit and not have to throw it on the ground.
Hail storm in La Ribera
The second of the environmental factors that make the next season complicated is hail. The most feared by farmers.
After a month of very high temperatures with three consecutive heat waves and that is making the thermometers do not go below 35 degrees was expected a day or two of heavy storms. Last Wednesday the skies began to cloud over, leaving a few small, insignificant showers.
Friday night is when there was a large concentration of clouds that, coupled with a mass of cold air, caused hail to fall in a large region of Valencia, from the Ribera to the Safor, citrus and persimmon crops have been affected.
Three days after the hailstorm you can see the damage caused in persimmons, where the "stone" destroyed many of these fruit trees, spoiling much of the production. In oranges and mandarins it is still too early to see the effects as the skin is thicker and more resistant. Everything seems to indicate that a part of the production will be chopped and the quality will be a little lower.
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