Fruits

Readers' tips were the centerpiece of our Feb. 17 issue. But there were so many of them we weren't able to use all of them in one issue. We'll be printing many more in the coming weeks. If you have a tip you'd like to share, please send it to travel@latimes.com , along with your name and city of residence. Want to carry a sandwich or salad on board in your small collapsible cooler? Freeze oranges or lemons and use them as your "blue ice. " Also, carry empty reusable water bottles and fill with ice and water after clearing security.

I have two orange trees that were planted 12 years ago. They bore beautiful fruit until four years ago, when my gardener pruned them rather severely. Since that pruning, no more fruit at all. But the trees appear healthy -- very green, with few yellowing leaves. Please advise as to how we can get them to bear fruit again. Frances Berlin Palm Desert For answers on if or how gardeners can revive a badly pruned citrus tree, we turned to Frank McDonough, botanist at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden in Arcadia.

Midwinter is peak time for citrus to be eaten fresh, and this year quality has been superb, probably because of the extended heat earlier in the growing season. Here are tips about which varieties to look for now and from which growing areas, including recommended growers, tips for choosing and using, and potential pitfalls. For each type there's also a peek at what the future has to offer. Algerian and some other clementines (from Southern California): At its best, sweet, juicy, rich-flavored, easy to peel and seedless.

Faye Resnick of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" has purchased a home in the Hollywood Hills for $1.605 million. The traditional-style house is surrounded by mature landscaping and sits on slightly more than half an acre with fruit trees, patios and a swimming pool. Features include an open floor plan, with hardwood floors, a living room fireplace and a wall of French doors in the dining room that open to a balcony with treetop views. There are three bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms and 2,567 square feet of living space.

DE LUZ - High on a hill overlooking an idyllic vista of citrus, avocados and chaparral, Bill Vogel spied a tree loaded with an unexpected bounty and started to holler. "Holy moly, look at all these starfruit," he said, cradling a cluster of ripening greenish-yellow fruit. "What's going on? I got a second crop and didn't know it. " Such are the occasional delights of pushing the envelope growing exotic fruits, which Vogel, 65, has been doing since 2000, when he started buying property in this pristine agricultural community at the southern end of the Santa Ana Mountains.

The Japanese apricot -- a plant native to China, actually -- is one of the longest lived of the flowering fruit trees. It's a symbol of resilience in the face of adversity thanks to its early flowers, delicate promises of spring that can begin blossoming before New Year's Day. The tree continues to send out white, rose or red flowers on nearly leafless branches, luring bees all through the winter. And then there is the fruit. Golf-ball sized orbs begin to appear in spring.

Congratulations, America! We've become a nation of healthier snackers. So says market research firm NPD, which has declared fresh fruit the most popular snack food in the country. Even better, the popularity of fresh fruit is continuing to grow. Over the course of a year, Americans snacked on fresh fruit an average of 10 times more than they snacked on chocolate and 25 times more than they snacked on potato chips, according to NPD's recent “Snacking in America” report . Fresh fruit, chocolate and potato chips were the top three snack foods identified in the report.

Del Aire residents got to enjoy the fruits of their labor Saturday with the unveiling of the state's first public orchard. Residents of this quiet, unincorporated slice of Los Angeles County had helped plant 27 fruit trees and eight grapevines in Del Aire Park and 60 additional fruit trees in the surrounding neighborhood. It was part of a larger renovation that included face lifts for a community center, basketball court and baseball field, all nestled in a green space just southwest of the juncture of the 105 and 405 freeways.

Panforte 's name translates to "strong bread," but it is more confection than cake or bread, barely bound with flour and heavy with preserved fruit and honey that dissolve together as they cook. It's studded with toasted nuts and spiced with black pepper, cloves, coriander, nutmeg, cinnamon and cocoa. Maybe it's because panforte is so often compared with fruitcake and confused with panettone - the raisin- and candied fruit-studded, brioche-like Italian bread - that we don't see enough of the traditional Tuscan cake during the holidays.

How can you keep squirrels and rats from raiding your citrus trees? The latest question for our SoCal Garden Clinic comes from reader Sandy Meyerowitz of Valley Glen: Brown squirrels and tree rats eat quite a lot of the fruit from my three large citrus trees: navel, blood and tangelo. The fruit that grows from these trees is very juicy and sweet, but unfortunately, the tops of these trees come very close to the roof of my house and the detached garage, so I am not sure there is an easy solution.