Lime Tree....very pretty....

My wife (Equihini) and I just bought a new house.

Needless to say, we are thrilled - and I cannot wait until the PAPE TOA TANE LOUNGE comes out of boxes (artwork by TikiCutie and Kirby!) and we can invite the SoCal Ohana to the house-warming!

So - today - we meet with a friend of ours who is a landscape architect - and the prior owners are there, congratulating us and giving us yet-another grande tour of the property - and the husband points out..."and over here is the LIME TREE!!! Alarm bells go off in my head, and visions of the perfect :drink: dance through my brain!

The tree is just drooping with big, green limes!! There's probably enough there to keep Martiki supplied with limes at Trader Vic's for - oh - at least three days!!

I pick off four good looking ones from the lower branches. The prior owner says "go ahead - they're yours!! How cool!! My own lime tree!!!!

I get home, all excited... Juicer? CHECK! Meyers? CHECK! Gold Rum? CHECK! Grand Marnier CHECK! Orgeat? CHECK! Grenadine? :lol: Only kidding, guys! T.V.'s rock candy syrup?? CHECK!!

I crush up some ice....grab my juicer - and....

THE LIMES ARE TERRIBLE!! I barely get a full ounce out of all four limes!!

The Mai Tai was - - - - adequate at best. But - after today - I needed it!

Are limes seasonal? Will they get better? They were "pulpy and dry" - that's my best description. How will I know when they are ripe? Ya know - they're always green... :( What Would Jab Do?

Oh...there's a guava tree, a lemon tree and an avocado tree, too!

[ Edited by: PapeToaTane 2005-09-22 20:22 ]

Congrats on the new house!!! How exciting.

Sounds like the lime tree needs some TLC and lots of water. As our trees did when we bought our place. We have a lemon and tangelo (orange) tree. A few oranges were late at ripening and left over from the last crop at Christmas time and they are pretty bad. No juice and all pulp too. They were great at Christmas when the whole tree was loaded!!

But, we have just a little lime tree that we put in a 1/2 wine barrel last year and it's kicking butt. Quite loaded for it's size. But I too have the same question.....how do you know when they are ripe.

Anybody out there have an answer for us???

:drink:

I would say water the tree long and deep. You should pick the limes when they are glossy green and almost turning yellow. They turn yellowish when ripe but by then may not be juicy. You can tell how juicy a lime is by it's weight. I always compare limes in the store by weight, one in each hand. Eventually you can tell which ones are heavier - sometimes the smallest ones yeild the most juice.

I don't know if this will help or not, but when I was young we moved to a farm house that had a small apple orchard in the front yard. The apples were small and dry tasting. If we watered the trees a lot, we just got a lot of small, dry apples. It wasn't until we pruned the shit out of the trees, thereby decreasing the amount of apples each tree produced, that we got nice, big, juicy apples. It took a good three years or so before they were good.

Would the same apply to limes? I have no clue. :)

I've got a lime tree (along with grapefruit, banana, and orange trees) in my yard and it yields great fruit. It might depend on what type of limes they are. Mine is a Persian lime tree and the fruit is sweet and juicy - great in mai tais. On the other hand, my neighbor has a lemon tree that is.. well, a lemon. The fruit it terrible no matter what they try. Our bananas are great, but the grapefruit and oranges are good but not great. Other types of lime trees - the Kaffir or Mexian (Key) lime won't juice as well. Find out what kind it is first, as it may help. If it's not a good juicing lime, plant another kind so mai tais will flow right from the back yard.
http://www.foodsubs.com/Fruitcit.html
Check out this link for a bit more info.

Thanks, everybody!! I'll have to do some research as to what kind of lime tree it is. I talked to the prior owner again today (he's only "owned" it since May, when his 107-year-old aunt died - but - he was well acquainted with the house and the flora!!) - he said it's never been given much care and is actually in a place that gets NO water unless it rains. I'll try a little pruning and tilling watering and fertilizing. If my Mai Tais taste like Miracle Gro - you'll know why!

Ok, I have a lime tree in the San Fernando Valley it is about one year old. We had enough rain this year for your tree to be ok. However you need to pick the limes when they are really young and have tender skins, once they stay on the tree too long they get hard skin and tough and not too juicy. And not all of them are really that great but at least half of them are pretty juicy, but in general they taste good. I just made 4 maitais and had to juice at least 7 of them to get enough juice for the drinks.

well finally I figured it out. The secret to having juicy limes is to pick them when they look big enough and put them aside for a week or so and just let them rest. When you are ready to use them after this time, you will notice they will be juicier and the skin is thinner.

My Aunt Sandra and Uncle Jay are living in Japan for a few years while my Uncle flys with a Tokyo Airline. He recently sent me this photo via e-mail, and said:

Sandra's effort at Japanese agriculture. A LEMON tree. I am waiting patiently as they look like they should be great in a whiskey sour or tom collins. This tree is growing enthusiastically on our balcony in spite of Sandra leaving it in my care while she was in Canada!