a navel orange variety that is sweet
seedless and absolutely delicious
let's look at growing the Washington
navel orange so we grew this tree in Irvine
California zone 10 and as you can see
the tree is hardly visible and it was a
one year old tree that we got from our
local garden center
and this sem-dwarf Washington navel orange
tree grows to a height of about seven to
ten feet and i always recommend that you
go to dwarf or semi dwarf trees in your
garden they do not take up a lot of
space and they do produce a lot of fruit
now let's talk a little bit about the history of
this plant this Washington navel orange
was actually imported from a city called
Bahia in Brazil and then sent out to
different states in the United States of
America now this was back in the
1870s from all the trees
that were sent out the ones in
California thrived and produced
delicious oranges that became an instant
success and the one person responsible
for cultivating this orange variety in
Southern California is Eliza Tibbets
she was the one who cultivated took care
of these plants and greatly contributed
to the part of southern california
that's known as orange county today so
let's look at the first three years of
growing this plant you need to choose a
nice sunny spot to grow your Washington
navel orange tree just like any other
citrus tree it needs a lot of sunlight
and it needs at least about six to eight
hours of sunlight every day
now the plant will start flowering
somewhere around spring which is about
march or april and then it'll produce
fruits that you can harvest starting
October so it flowers in spring and then
you can start harvesting your fruits from
October through about January so
depending on when you want to harvest
the fruit you can plan to grow different
varieties of oranges for example there
are other varieties like cara cara which
produce fruits earlier this plant
produces fruits in the winter season as
you can see here this plant grows pretty
much like a bush not like a full-fledged
three and that's the characteristic of
dwarf or semi dwarf trees now for the
first one to three years i would say
at least the first four years you need to
make sure that you follow a very good
fertilizer schedule for your orange
trees and I've explained the fertilizer
schedule for fruit trees in one of my
previous videos i do recommend that you
check it out
but in general what you need to do is
start feeding your plants with a good
organic fertilizer somewhere around the
spring season and then at least add
fertilizer about two to three times
during the growing season that's a good
ballpark to remember it's very important
that you do add fertilizer once you
plant or you get your tree and planted
it least for the first four years so you
can see here the fruits look pretty good
they're large fruits and they are called naval
because of a unique mutation that occurs
in this plant and i'll show you that
when we cut open the fruit you can see
here the fruits are pretty large they weigh
about 370 grams or about 13 ounces
and that's a pretty good sized fruit
pretty large pretty sweet and very delicious
and as you can see here the plant
produces these heavy fruits so you might
see that the branches are drooping down
once the fruits become heavy but the
branches are pretty strong they don't
really break they can hold the weight of
all these fruits
so very pretty looking fruits they have a
nice thick rind and taste wise i think
these are one of the best citrus trees
you can grow in your garden the oranges
are very delicious very sweet they are
seedless and i highly recommend that you
try growing this orange variety
now this orange variety will not
tolerate a complete frost a freeze so I
recommend that if you do get a freeze in
your area you plant them in containers
so that you can get them home indoors
during the chilly winter months now as
far as watering goes it really
depends on the temperatures in your area
but citrus do like to be dry in between
waterings so if your plant is small you
can get away with watering every two to
three times a week and as your plant
grows up and grows bigger you need to
limit the watering to maybe about once
a week or twice a week really depending
on how hot it gets in your area so as you
can see here this plant produces more
and more fruits as time goes by and
will give you very delicious oranges
once the tree is established which takes about
two years or so now this plant is
seedless so it cannot be propagated via
seeds and it can be propagated by
grafting and by buds so that is the only
way to propagate this plant now a lot of
you have asked me if there's any problem
growing seedlings varieties and the
answer is No seedless platns to do occur
in nature they are not GMOs they're not
genetically modified they're perfectly
healthy plants that you can grow and eat
and the reason they do not have seeds is
because they have evolved to this stage
for example even the banana had seeds
once upon a time but as we started
cultivating the plant the plant evolved
and it now gives us bananas that are
seedless
one of the insects that really
devastates this plant is the leaf miner
and as you can see here we did have some
leaf minor damage very early on when we
got this plant and this is especially
true when the plant is producing new
leaves the leaf miners like to attack
these new leaves and then just
completely destroy the plant now on
mature trees the leaf miner doesn't
really have much effect but if you have
a small tree and it's affected by leaf
miners there's a very easy solution to
take care of your leaf miner attack
all you do is take a pump sprayer and
then mix spinosad and mineral oil
and then spray your plants
spray your plants very well
schedule please do refer to my video on
tackling the leaf miner attack on citrus
plants and you get an idea of how to
deal with this problem now make sure
when you're spraying that you spray the
entire plant the underside of the leaves
as well and also little bit on the
ground
where the leaf miner adults lay their eggs
and they should do a good job of taking
care of your leaf miner attack on your
citrus plants now a lot of YouTube
viewers have given me feedback that they
need to see how the fruit looks like
whenever I'm making these videos so here
it is this is how the Washington navel
orange looks like and when you cut open
the orange you can clearly see the navel
which is pretty much like a small fruit
at the bottom of the orange you can
clearly see that in the cross-section
and as I mentioned earlier this is due
to the mutation of this plant which
produces this small fruit at the bottom
of this fruit and it just the way the
plant is this is a wonderful plant it
produces oranges that are sweet
delicious and prolific and seedless as
well so here's one more and during the
harvest season you can harvest a lot of
oranges from this plant this is an
excellent plant to go in your home garden
and looking at the cross section this is a
beautiful orange extremely beautiful
seedless and very good to eat
so there we have it folks that was our
episode on growing the Washington navel
orange I hope I covered all the aspects of
clothing this tree in your garden if you
have any more questions do drop in a
comment and if you like this video do
give us a thumbs-up I'll see you again soon
happy gardening