Nokwanele Mzamo, Kirkwood, Eastern Cape

We’re in the middle of our lemon harvest now. At the Luthando Trust Farm, a 139ha citrus farm, we have lemons, oranges and soft citrus (naartjies), which we pack and market through the Sundays River Citrus Company.

Most of our fruit is exported to Europe and the Middle East. We grow one lemon cultivar, the Eureka. Our oranges are ripening, and we will start harvesting early oranges by mid April. We harvest the later-maturing oranges from May.

We have Afourers and M7 and B17 navel oranges, which help us stretch the season for a longer harvest to supply the market demand for late citrus.

Right now we’re making sure that we look after the trees by weeding, irrigating and following a strict fertilisation programme.

For our foliar spray fertiliser programme we use LB Urea (1kg/hectolitre), Tsama Zinc (30ml/hectolitre), V12 Micro (125ml/hectolitre), V12 Multi (150ml/hectolitre) and manganes sulphate (200g/hectolitre). The soil application fertilisers are Uran-based: Liquimax DS (240ml/ha) and RDD Humic Acid (60ℓ/ha).