In my garden: Limes!

I planted a lime tree for my wife, Laura. She loves to cook and bake and was always having to buy limes in the stores for her marinades, salad dressings, tofu tacos and desserts. Store-bought limes are usually tiny and dry, you need half a dozen just to get a couple tablespoons of juice. I bought a Bearss lime tree, which produces large, juicy, and very flavorful fruit with a sturdy yet thin skin. Makes it easy to juice and easy to zest. It's the best tree I have found for the home cook and baker. Laura gets one full cup of juice from about eight of these limes!

Lime trees are pretty compact little trees, and they produce almost all year round. They require very little upkeep, just a few inches of quality compost in the spring and fall and water regularly (but don't overdo it). You can prune for shape, but as you can see, I don't do that. If you get some aphids or mealy bugs, simply wash them off with water. If you get leaf miners, trails of brown in the green leaves, and very common in Southern California, use an organic oil spray with pyrethrin which is an extract from a flower, or spinosad which is an organic natural bacteria. 

Pick the limes when they turn from dark green to a pale green as this is the optimal time for flavor and juice. A little bit of yellow is ok, but if the whole fruit turns yellow, you won't get that nice true lime flavor. It mellows and sweetens, and while some people like that flavor, we like the tart, fresh taste of a perfectly ripe lime. 

We pick the limes when ripe and then zest and juice them, freezing the juice in either ice cube trays or 1/4 to 1/2 cup freezer containers and freezing the zest as well. This way there is always lime juice and zest in the freezer (along with all the lemon juice/zest we have in our freezer). Another good storage idea is to place the limes in a zip lock plastic bag in your refridgerator. They will last a full month this way. 

Margarita's anyone?