The Ruby Red Grapefruit Tree, originating from Texas, is a citrus marvel celebrated for its vibrant fruits and refreshing flavor. This evergreen tree graces gardens with glossy green leaves and fragrant white blossoms, infusing the air with a delightful citrus scent.
I. Appearance and Characteristics
The Ruby Red Grapefruit Tree has shiny, green foliage that covers the tree from top to bottom and produces fragrant, white four-petal flowers. Ruby Red Grapefruits are round, baseball sized fruit with a pale lemon color tinged with pink blush. The flesh of the fruit is sweet, juicy and brightly red.
The Ruby Red Grapefruit tree with botanical name Citrus Paradise, is from an evergreen citrus tree from the Citrus genus in the family Rutaceae. Although its origin is a little bit obscure, the variety may have been a horticultural accident or meticulous hybridization. Research shows that this Grapefruit is a hybrid of pummelo (Citrus grandis) and the sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) and was named thus due to the grape-like clusters in which fruit grows on trees.
This Grapefruit tree first arrived in the state of Florida in 1823 but did not gain popularity due to its acidity and difficulty to peel. Some planted the citrus tree and sold or gave away the produce as a novelty fruit. It was only in 1929 when the most celebrated mutation in the history of citrus fruit was discovered in an orchard in Texas that the fruit gained its popularity. Growing on a pink grapefruit tree was a mutated red grapefruit, which became the Ruby Red Grapefruit tree variety the first of its kind to get U.S. patent.
The Ruby Red Grapefruit Tree is usually grown to 16-20 ft tall to ensure large fruit size and easy fruit picking, although when left alone it can grow as high as 40-50ft. This citrus tree has shiny, green foliage that covers the tree from top to bottom and produces fragrant, white four-petal flowers.
The Ruby Red Grapefruits are round, baseball sized fruit with a pale lemon color tinged with pink blush. The flesh of the fruit is sweet, juicy and brightly red. Ruby Red Grapefruit is a rich source of vitamin C and vitamin A, potassium, fiber, beta-carotene, lycopene that gives it its distinct red color and is a powerful antioxidant.
II. How to Grow and Care
Sunlight
Ruby Red grapefruit trees grow best in full sun — six or more hours of direct light a day.
Watering and Fertilizing
For the first year after planting, water your sapling every week, or more frequently if you’re experiencing very hot or dry weather. After the first year, you can taper back on watering. Give the tree a drink whenever the soil 2 inches below the surface is dry. Container-grown trees will need more frequent watering. Fertilize your Ruby Red grapefruit tree with a well-balanced, slow-release product intended for citrus trees. Feed throughout the growing season, as the package directions indicate.
Planting Instructions
Site your Ruby Red grapefruit sapling where it will get full sun, in well-drained soil. Unpot your tree, and tease out any encircling roots, which will girdle the tree and eventually kill it. Dig a hole that’s as deep as the root ball and twice as wide. Throw in a few handfuls of well-rotted manure or compost, and place the tree on top of it. Fill in around the tree with good-quality topsoil, tamping down as you go to eliminate air pockets. Water thoroughly. Apply a 2- to 3-inch layer of organic mulch, such as bark chips, around the root zone to conserve water, making sure it doesn’t touch the trunk.
Pruning
Prune your Ruby Red grapefruit tree after you harvest the fruit. Cut off any suckers that appear around the base of the trunk, as well as any dead, diseased, or damaged branches. Cut off branches that are rubbing against each other as well. If you are growing your grapefruit in a container, you can prune annually to control growth. When making a cut, terminate the branch where it meets with another branch, rather than at the tip.
Pollination
Grapefruit is monoecious, or self-pollinating; with a single tree you should still be able to harvest fruit. The trees have small creamy-white flowers that cluster at the end of branches. Bees and other insects visit the fragrant flowers and move pollen from the male to the female reproductive organs in the flowers. If your Ruby Red grapefruit tree lives indoors, you can help along the pollination process by swirling a small paintbrush in the flower to pick up pollen and placing it on another flower’s stigma.
Pests and Diseases
Although a healthy Ruby Red grapefruit tree should be able to fend off most pest invasions or diseases, it doesn’t hurt to be on the lookout for insects such as spider mites, thrips, and scale insects. These can be handled with insecticidal soap or dormant oil spray. There are several diseases that are common with grapefruits, including anthracnose, which causes irregular spots on leaves and fruit and can be treated with a fungicide. Citrus black spot is another fungal disease that causes, not surprisingly, black spots on leaves. Apply fungicide and prune out all infected branches, destroying them to avoid spreading the disease.
III. Uses and Benefits
Although they are a sweet and refreshing treat right off the tree, you can use a Ruby Red grapefruit in any recipe calling for grapefruit or grapefruit juice. Ruby Reds can be juiced easily, used in salads, and made into jams and marmalades. They are often used in seafood recipes as well.
IV. Harvesting and Storage
Grapefruit is generally ready to harvest in the fall months. Harvest them by hand when at least half of the peel has turned to yellow and the fruit feels firm and heavy. Interestingly enough, you can leave the fruit on the tree through winter and it will only get sweeter. Leaving it, however, will mean that you have a smaller harvest the next year.
