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With every soccer game played, for every lemonade stand made, through every passing summer, Floridians are constantly enjoying the sweet and sour pleasures of citrus fruits.

Oranges, lemons, tangerines, clementines. Grapefruits, tangelos, pomelos, key lime, oh my!

All enjoyed by Floridians alike, peeled and devoured, each seed is spit to our left or our right. But what if we saved these seeds and started a home citrus orchard all your own? Brilliant, right?

Let us begin our lesson to grow any of these wondrous fruits of Florida:

First, as with everything we eat, choose the absolute sweetest, succulent citrus fruit you can find. For the sake of simplicity and familiarity, let’s choose the classic Florida orange. Pick the biggest, bestest orange around!

Eat it. Enjoy it. But save the seeds!

When selecting your seeds, be sure to select seeds that are larger than the rest, undamaged, and healthy. Citrus seeds usually come in abundance within the fruit so it shouldn’t be difficult to select a few good ones. Unless you were like me in my first attempt stateside and you bought a handful of seedless oranges completely forgetting such genetic marvels exist. Moral of the story, make sure the oranges are natural and have seeds. #NonGMOALLTHEWAY

Moving on.

With your seeds, peel the beige-ish flesh to expose the brown-green seed within. Be very very careful in doing so to not damage the seed. Once successfully accomplished, you will need these items to continue:

Paper towel
Plastic Bag
Water

With these powers combined, you can create the perfect germinator!. It’s really easy from here. Put the seeds in the paper towel, securely wrapped and saturate the towel with the water. Once good and wet, place the seed-towel combo in the plastic bag (label if you have a lot going on) and place somewhere cool and dark for about 10 – 14 days.

After this time your seeds should be good and ready to plant in your seed starting potting mix, like Espoma Organic Seed Starter.

#ComeGrowWithUs