From an interview with Ed Pilz, Dec. 29, 1992 for the Placer County Historical Society
I decided to plant citrus when I felt there were too many regulations for deciduous fruit. You had to get a permit to spray; people were coming in and complaining about the "poison", and I had to be a certain distance from the creeks with the spray, etc. This was around 1961 as best I can remember. There weren’t any citrus pest here then. There are now, you sort of inherit them. With Citrus you didn’t have to prune or spray or thin, just irrigate basically At that time, citrus trees were selling for about $5.00 a piece. I planned on planting on an 18 foot triangle which takes some 135-140 trees to the acre. Just a little arithmetic showed it was too expensive. To overcome the cost of buying the trees, I decided to grow them myself. I found the preferred root stock was Trifoliete. I had some Cleopatra that I had bought in Fresno. You would line them out in a nursery row and then bud them to whatever you wanted. Trifoliete was the top kind, although not as vigorous as Cleopatra. So I put the seeds in a nursery bed 4 x 8, an inch apart with about 2 inches between rows and grew them there for about a year. Then I had to line them in a nursery row for another year, then plant them out in the orchard and wait for another two or three years before they got the fruit on them. So, when the first trees began to crop was about 1968. I found that Trifoliete root stock produces a better shaped fruit and the skin is thinner than the fruit from Cleopatra root stock
Citrus lasts indefinitely, unless frozen out. We had a freeze in 1990. I lost about 25 or so scattered and fifty Blood Orange trees in one spot that got frozen out before. Historically, there is about 40 years between freezes. I thought for another 40 years we’d be alright, but it didn’t work out that way. We had those trees that were just getting about two feet tall and they were all frozen out. But the majority of the others survived. We lost better than half our Mandarins because we didn’t have them picked. We lost 95% of the Navals. The same thing with the Algerian Tangerines. The following year, 1991, we didn’t have any crop.
If you eat frozen citrus within 10 days or so, there’s very little difference. But after that, there’s rapid deterioration, they just dry out.
This year (1992) we were ready to pick Mandarins, 10 days to two weeks ago and were selling them as fast as we could pick them. Then it rained. If it rains 500ths or a 10th of an inch today, you can’t pick tomorrow. You need two days at least, because those leaves can hold at least a half a teaspoonful of water each and can get you soaking wet. And beware, if you pick them when they’re wet and handle them, like picking them and dumping them in a lug box, that little natural protection they have from the elements is penetrated and then you get the deterioration from the outside. . .
This interview in its entirety, can be seen at the Reference Dept of the Auburn Placer County Library. Mr. Pilz also showed the pattern of how he planted his mandarins and other interesting facts about being a citrus grower.