This green and immature fruit fell off my tree while doing maintenance on Saturday. Opened it up this morning....

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Much better color on that fruit. The color should get darker if anything as they ripen. Your tree will produce higher quality fruit as it matures.

Evan

The color of lycopene colored fruit such as GF and red oranges is maximum earlier and it fades later. Anthocyanin colored fruit such as blood oranges start without color and get darker with cold weather. Winters on the Texas coast fail to color some blood orange varieties entirely.

Anyone telling you that California GF taste better than those from Texas must like very insipid or sour fruit.

Well sir. I realize that you are an organic grower and a chemist and I certainly respect that fact. Your keen insight and knowledge regarding red fruit is also much appreciated.

However, my taste buds are still working just fine even though I am now uh... middle aged. (<: Could the better flavor in my Cali. beach gf be due to the fact that I grew mine pretty much organically and the Tx fruit was grown commercially and probably used non-organics?

More likely that you left your fruit longer on the tree, while the TX GF that you are finding in your markets have been harvested earlier and ethane gassed to color them. I don't believe that "organic" vs "commercial" has anything to do with this issue.

I agree with John. Supermarkets are notorious for treating various fruits and vegetables with ethylene gas (which plants naturally produce to signal ripening events). This is also why tomatoes that are home grown taste many times better and have a different texture than those from the store. It turns out for shipping reasons and shelf life it's better for supermarkets to obtain realitively unripe fruit and then alter cosmetics with ethylene.

True except it's done at the wholesale level. Your average supermarket, even large chains, aren't set up for ethylene treatment of their produce. It's the wholesale growers or co-ops that do the ethylene gas treatments, and add the food grade wax to produce so it doesn't dry out, and the careful refrigeration to hold produce at the optimum temperature to lengthen the season of market availability.

The flavor was only a tiny bit better but being just a backyard grower, I was pretty darn proud of myself. I can understand about how supermarkets or wholesalers gas their fruit. On the other hand, the care and preparation that I take in planting and caring for my trees could also have something to do with the flavor.

PKG,

You are rightly proud of your achievement. BTW, in the case of grapefruits they only need to be treated with ethylene during the earliest part of the season, when the fruit is ripe but the color hasn't developed. The process is not adding color; the color is already there; the process only degrades the chlorophyll that is masking the color; that is why in the industry it is referred to as degreening.

Revising and extending my earlier remarks. Texas red GF is ripe in Dec thru Feb. Any TX GF sampled in June is way out of season. California Red GF are months later. Only Star Ruby from CA has ever been a taste competitor with TX GF of almost any variety. TX Star Ruby is a lot better than any other TX variety except for $ to the grower.

The dark color may indicate it is a Star Ruby which has been mislabeled. I have several nursery trees that were sold that way. Compare your fruit with a CA grown Star Ruby.

That might make sense that this tree is mislabeled as Rio Red and is actually a Star Ruby. Have read that Star Ruby does better in Coastal areas.

My Rio Red does not get that dark, ever. It looks just like yours. Your store one is likely mislabeled.

CA grapefruit can be amazing, sweet things. They just have to be picked at the right time.

I'm showing Rio Red fruiting March to September and Star Ruby February to September. This is per Armstrong citrus garden guide and the tag on my tree. That would make the June taste test right in the middle of the harvest.