The Seville oranges have arrived in the local farm shop (this means that preserving sugar, without added pectin, has disappeared from the local supermarket. They allocate a tiny amount of shelf space to it, and have never worked out that it sells much faster during the brief marmalade season).
One of my first attempts as a child at sowing seed was with orange pips. I can't remember what growing medium I used, but I'm sure it wasn't specialist citrus compost. They made healthy little plants that lasted for some time on a south east facing window sill in a chilly hall, until arrangements for watering during the annual family camping holiday failed. I tried again a few years ago with bought pips from a seed catalogue and nothing came up, which made me wonder if they dislike drying out and need to be fresh. Last marmalade time I sowed two pots of Seville seeds, in citrus compost as I had some, and tried one in a heated propagator and one unheated. Nothing appeared in either, and searching around in one pot with a finger I couldn't even find the pips. I concluded that I must have over-watered them and that they had rotted, and chucked one pot into the rubbish bin, only to find it had contained white seedling roots. The pips after sowing turn dark brown and are very difficult to spot among the compost. I rescued as many as I could find and ended up with about a dozen young Seville orange plants. They have made it through the winter so far in a greenhouse which is kept just about frost free by running an electric fan heater when the thermometer is below freezing for long periods. It is otherwise unheated, including nights when temperatures dip low enough to give a frost, so they can't need much in the way of heat. My next mission is to find one of those large and really knobbly lemons and try the seeds from that. I believe limes need more warmth than I can supply.
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