Total orange farming guildline and information

Orange is a citrus tree, one of the best trees out there in all ramifications because of it’s various uses/benefits and it’s great economic and financial potential it has on the planter if done and taken care of very well.

Orange is an average tall and dark greenish citrus tree that develop round and dark green fruits, which later turn to yellow when riped and the fruits contain very sweet liquid/juice.

Orange is grown on many climates and temperature, so this made it a global agricultural venture, although the tree do best in a warm climate condition, but it does not prove useless on other climate conditions, as many countries venture into its cultivation.

It has great economic potential as many countries export it which helps to boost some reasonable percentage of their economic growth and development. Some top orange producing and exporting countries are: Brazil,USA,China,India,Mexico,Spain,Egypt,Turkey,Italy,South Africa.

It is a great source of passive income for farmers as this plant requires no work when it have grown and could last up to up to 30 to 40 years of continuous harvest and it could bear fruits up to 3 times per year, depending on the type/variety of orange/oranges you planted.

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In this article, we are going to learn about orange farming process and some informations about it.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Types/varieties of orange

How to grow orange

Care of orange farm

Harvest of orange fruits

Storage of orange fruits

How profitable is orange farming

Uses of orange

       Types/varieties of orange

Orange has many types/varieties, each type of orange depends solely on the environment or climate it is adaptable to, so here are some of the varieties of oranges- Red Navel, Temple (Royal mandarin), Valencia (Citrus Sinensis Valencia), Ambersweet,Blood, Hamlin Navel, Page, Ortanique, Parson Brown, Pineapple,etc… are some of the top most high-yielding varieties of oranges that give more number or orange fruits. Apart from this, Nagpur Santra (Mandarin), Sumithra mandarin, Darjeeling Mandarin, Kinnow mandarin, Blood Red, Sathukudi (Satagudi), Dancy, SZ-IN-COM, Coorg Santra, Mosambi, Kara, Khasi Santra, Seedless-182, Shringar, Hamlin, Butwal, Mudkhed, and Jaffa

Types of oranges like the sweet orange is considered the most suitable orange for both agriculture and acceptability.
It is considered as the most popular type of orange because of it’s high level of taste and this made it a viral type of orange as it is sold and taken in every part of the world you could think of.

This particular type of orange is said to have originated from Asia and slowly, it got more popular and spread all over the world and it is now being planted in almost any part of the world.

Although the type/variety of orange determines the type of climate or wether condition they could adapt to, some are grown and does fine in a cold climate condition, some do very well in moderate climate condition and some are perfect in a very hot climate condition, but in over all, it has been proven that the best climate orange does well on is the warm climate condition.
In a warm climate, they seems to grow more healthy and more fruity, no matter the type of orange involved.

              How to grow orange

From the above explanations on the types and varieties of oranges, you must have to make your choice on which type to farm, depending on your location and weather condition.

let’s dive into the procedures for growing them.

To grow an orange or oranges, I advise you to start from the seeds.

To start from the seeds, it means you will have make them germinate and transplant them to your farm.
It is not as hard as some people take it as.

First, let’s talk about farm land.

        Site a good farmland

Orange although does normal in every climate condition, it does not mean they can survive on any type of land, to site or locate the appropriate farm land for growing this plant, there are few things to consider and avoid, unless the trees will either die or yield low fruits.
The thing to consider are:

Soil nutrients, although you can occasionally improve the soil nutrients with either organic manure or fertilizer, but it is important to review rhe soil anyway!. The best soil content for orange trees is pH 5.8 to 7.5.

Erosion and wind, these two factors are the greatest natural disasters any farmer could experience.
So before you site your orange farm, it is very important to check this two factors, if not, a single erosion can sweep both your plants and soil nutrients away and a single wind could destroy all the trees and their fruits wether ripe or unripe.

Orange trees just like any other plant need the sunlight to survive, so it is important the farm land is in a place where the sun could penetrate.

  Orange seed germination process

When you have successfully gotten or located an appropriate land,the next is seed.

To do this, find the the perfect breed that does well in your location, buy the seeds or buy orange fruits, lick them and get their seeds, depending on the number you might want and depending on the size of your farm.

When you have your seeds ready, take a nylon bag or based, depending on the number of seeds, fill those bags with good and fertile loamy sand and make tiny holes of about 1 inch or 1 and half with your fingers in the sand you put the bags.

Put those orange seeds and place them in the holes you made in the sand you have the bags, put them 1 per hole and cover with sand after you are done, take the bags and keep them in warm places around your house or shade and leave them there to germinate.

When they germinate, take them to the sun and allow them there for about 5 to 10 minutes each day before you transplant them to the farm.

Note – don’t take them to hot sun, early morning sun is the best!.

Also water them from time to time and don’t over water them. This should be done in the morning or evening.

    Orange farm preparation process

Before your seeds might have germinated or before you might have brought or received the seeds you ordered, you need to prepare the farm land where you will plant them.

To do this, find good land with soil pH of 5.8 to 7.5, clear the farm land off any rubbish, if there is any, pour organic manures such as animal dugs, or compost after you have cleared the land and allow rain to mix them up with the soil for more soil fertility.

To clear the land, you need tools, according to the size of the farm land, for instance, if the size numbers in Hectares, plots, you definitely need a tractor. If it is a small land, Cutlass, spade and rake will do.

The day or the next day before you plant the germinated orange seeds, go to the farm land and make holes of 15 to 20 inches, depending on how tall the germinated oranges have grown, make a space of 4 to 5 feet or more between each hole, depending on the type you planted, so that they could have space when they grow, as orange trees do grow huge, depending on the type.

When you are through with the holes, take the germinated oranges and place each in one hole and cover the holes with earth, leaving a large amount of the growing stem and leaves up on the surface.

Immediately pour water on them and also manure, if you want.

The best time to plant/farm orange trees is during the rainy season, so that they could adapt quickly because of rain and you won’t need to be watering them always.

                Care of orange farm

When you are done with the orange planting, the work is not yet over, infact, it just started! this is because there are things to do so that the growing orange trees could grow properly and start growing fruits as quick as possible. Some of the cares to give them are:

Weeding: Weed has always been a stubling block on any farm or agricultural crop/plant, and orange plants are not exceptional.

The weeding process of orange farm is very tiresome and taskful because orange is a slow grower. Because of the slow growing nature of this plant, it made it possible for weed to always out grow them any time they sprout out.

Because they take a very long time to grow, weed pose a very big threat by competiting in absorbing the nutrients they need to grow with on the long run, thereby causing malnutrition to them which could either kill them or stagnate their growth process.

Weed could also habour diseases, organisms or pests that could destroy the growing orange trees.

To take care of weed in the orange farm, they should be removed immediately they spring up either with weed killer chemicals or manually with weeding equipments.

Pest control: Orange tree has good number of pests that do disturb it both from early stage to it’s maturity stage, including when they have fruits.

At early stage, starting from the seed, insects of all type love the orange seeds and they do feed on them at any slightest chance they have.
Rats do eat the seeds when exposed to them, so when germinating the seeds, it is important to consider these pests and control them.

During the growth stage, pest like caterpillars and birds including some insects do disturb them.
Caterpillars do eat the leaves, thereby killing the plants slowly.
birds of some type do take the leaves for nest building.
And some insects do inhabit the trees, using the leaves/branches/stems to build their houses and in many cases they do eat the trees right from the inside.

When the orange fruits are ripe, pests like bat, birds and butterfly are attracted to them.

To take care of them, there are things that might help such as insecticide, scarecrows etc, these will kill the insects and the scarecrows will scare the birds and chase them away.

Watering. Watering is one of the most important cares the orange trees will require at their small or tender stage.
This is important because at this stage, during the dry season, they need to be watered from time to time like about 2 or 3 times a week and this should be done either in the morning or in the evening.

Although watering could take a short while like about a year or a year and few months, by then, the trees must have matured enough to sustain themselves with water.

Manures/Fertilizer: Periodically, manures should be applied to them from time to time, even when they have fully grown and start growing fruits.

This is particularly important if the soil lack good nutrients or the nutrients in it is fading, in this condition, manures such as animal dungs ( fowl, pig, cow, goat) dungs, kitchen waste ( peel from vegetables and yam etc ) should be applied on the bottom of the trees to facilitate more yields and healthy growth.

Pile sand on the bottom of the trees: This is only necessary when the orange trees have stayed for a very long time, may be 10 to 30 years, at this stage, the tree is getting old and the some of the roots have started surfacing to the ground and some could be seen.

Sometimes erosion is the cause of this, and if not controlled, might bring about the uproot of the trees easily by wind or the trees will die.

The only remedy for this is to dig out good sand and pile them on the bottom of the trees so that the sand could cover the roots and protect the tree from falling or dying out of malnutrition.

           Harvest of orange fruits

There are different types or breeds of oranges, all of them have their growth velocity and time to start growing fruits.

An average orange takes about 2 to 3 years to have their first fruits. Normally their first fruits are few, maybe 10 to 50 or a little bit more, but as they grow, they start having large numbers of fruits like 100s up to few thousands.

Before any orange tree could start having fruits, they must first of all grow flowers.
These flowers are white in colour and they stay on the trees before the fruits are formed from them.

When the fruits have finally been formed, they will start from small like a big dark green Dot and grow into big oranges.

whithin a month or two or even a little bir more, they will start turning from dark green to yellow, at this stage, you will know they have ripped and are ready to be harvested/plucked.

To harvest/pluck them, you need a farm ladder which you can use to reach them up on their trees. Take a big bag with you while climbing the ladder and pick the oranges by selecting the ripe ones only, as all of them cannot be ripe at the same time. Also put on a safety shirt as orange tree has pines which could seriously injure you.

Another alternative to harvest them is to buy a harvester and do the harvesting work more easily and faster.

Note – don’t in anyway allow the oranges to fall on the ground, if they do, they will definitely spoil in a day.

            Storage of orange fruits

After the harvest of any crop, storage is always the next issue to face, that is how important storage is in agriculture.

Orange is not excluded from this, so let’s discuss about the storage system of orange fruit.

To store oranges, you need a refrigerator.
This is the only viable way to store them and they could last a short while in the refrigerator.

It is best to harvest the fruits when there is availability of immediate market.

Although orange is very high demanded fruit and so you can sell them on the tree and the buyer will harvest them themselves, thereby saving you the time and energy of of both harvesting and storing.

   How profitable is orange farming

We have learned about the procedures for growing orange trees and the necessary informations involved, now let’s discuss about the market potential and profitability of farming orange.

As I stated earlier, orange trees could last up to 30 years or more if taken good care of and depending on the breed you planted.
This means you only need to do the hard work to groom them for 1 year and enjoy the profits it yields for a very long time continuously without doing anything else than to be harvesting them for about 2 times a year. This ia huge!

Talking about the market, there is a very huge market for this fruit to the extent of being a good percentage of some countries income, this is huge!

There is always buyers anytime any day!

                 Uses of orange

There are many reasons oranges are planted and brought and those reasons are why the fruit is costly in the markets, fruit shops and supermarkets. Some Importance of orange fruits are.:

They are very sweet, and so are licked because of their sweetness and it’s juicy water could be used in place of normal water.

Different juice industries are the highest buyers of this fruit because they use them for manufacturing all kinds of drinks like juice, orange drink, some beverages and alcoholic drinks also.

Some types of orange trees(the tall and giant orange types) are used for making planks which is used for both roofing, making furnitures and firewood.

Oranges are rich in citric acid and dietary fibers, which are effective in the removal of harmful waste, toxins, Acne from the body. there fore, orange could be used for skin whitening.

Orange fruits has a high amount of carotenoid compounds, a source of vitamin A, it helps in the prevention of macular regeneration.

Taking Oranges on empty stomach is helpful in Detoxification and provide lots of energy to the body.

Oranges are low-calorie fruit, so the regular consumption of it is beneficial in weight loss.

                       Conclusion

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