I also grow in a marginal area, and cover them a few times a year, also use incandescent lights which automatically come on when the temp gets below freezing.
4 variety of Kumquat(Meiwa, nagami, marumi and Fukushu), 4 satsuma (owari, brown select, okitsu wase, and arctic frost) 2 tangerine (ponkan and sunburst) 2 navels (Cara Cara and a Glen)and 2 meyer lemon in ground along with 2 rootstock trifoliate in ground to one day harvest seeds from for grafting out some plants for people. Also a calamondin, kishu, finger lime and a meyer in pots but mostly due to lack of space in ground. Some in ground 3 years the rest only 2 so not a ton of fruit yet but the kumquats are very productive and the owari has fruited now 2/3 years but it’s not in enough sun really but oh well. Where did you get the Prague from? Stan McKenzie? I’d like one but really I don’t have space haha maybe I could get one and plant it at my parents house, or remove the two trifoliates and put those in pots and plant it there. In a year or so I’ll want to graft onto these existing trees, but basically the only thing I don’t collect that is citrus is grapefruit, maybe I’d like it if I grew it but I’ve never had a grapefruit that I wanted to eat a second one of
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Yeah sudachi stay really compact but you can always prune it back to the shape you need
Sudachi on a flying dragon rootstock will get about 5 feet tall with an equal spread. Mine are only a few years old and are about 3 feet. This has been the best fruit yield so far on its 3rd summer. I counted about 50 fruit. They are very tolerant of the heat. I have them growing in a raised bed against a 20 foot wall that gets very hot. The average high in both locations is around 90 in July and August, so you can imagine how hot the raised bed gets. It’s also surrounded by a concrete paver patio which adds to the heating effect. I think the microclimate is the reason I can grow citrus successfully here in Oregon during winter. That area has an awning that creates a rain shadow and it never accumulates frost.
I think sudachi is really worth growing if you are into Japanese cuisine. It’s a very popular citrus in Japan, used for udon noodle dishes and to make ponzu sauce. I like Japanese food too, but I really grow it because sudachi and yuzu are the only quality citrus I can grow unprotected in this area of Oregon. I much prefer the sudachi over the yuzu as it has far fewer seeds. The average sudachi only has about 5 seeds, whereas the yuzu has 24.
I clone lots of sudachi cuttings. If you’d like to have one on its own roots I can send it to you. You really have unlimited options being in SoCal. I grew up down there near Palm Springs and the heat was never a problem even though we got up to 120 in the summer. Even still the sudachi might be a fun specimen for you to grow as it’s not very common and maybe that appeals to you. I know I like growing plant specimens that aren’t all that common. Just keep in mind sudachi are very small, just slightly larger than a key lime.
I’m growing Owari Satsuma in the front yard. With they’re sprawling growth habit, I’m able to keep them at 3 ft or below. Since they don’t grow as fast as some other citrus, I only need to prune once or twice a year to keep them at this height.
Do you know what kind of rootstock they are on?
I’m doing some experiments to compare standard trifoliate, citrange and flying dragon trifoliate in my zones. I also clone all my citrus so I have specimens that are on their own roots too.
If you want to clone it is really easy. You just have to make sure it’s very warm. So either summer or get a heating mat and do it indoors. Use a mix with peat moss, sand and perlite as your cooking medium. I get very high success rate.
I have 2 satsuma trees in the back yard, they are small even after 8-9 years. They are in the ground too and I have yet to prune them.
I have lots of friends at the senior center who would be interested in this sudoki for Japanese cuisine, I’m personally not into this cuisine. But I need some thing lime like, eventhough I don’t eat a lot of lime either, but I already have access to a lot of lemon trees or lemon already. My goal is to turn my yard into a big bowl of fruit, lol, no land left un planted, haha
This is true of a few types of citrus, but not true for most of them. Most limes, most lemons other than Meyer, most oranges, and many mandarins are very hard to root. Meyer is easy, some mandarins are easy, trifoliate is super easy. The hardy ones like Yuzu and Sudachi also rooted fine for me (got those cuttings from you).
That’s interesting to know. It’s only pure coincidence that I’ve only been rooting the ‘easy’ ones you mentioned.
Are you going to plant the sudachi and yuzu outside eventually? There are three other people I know in this immediate area who successfully grow the sudachi and yuzu without any winter protection. Though we all have contingency plans for when a freak cold snap happens. It was the yuzu at One Green World, covered with fruit every autumn, that inspired me to give this entire enterprise a shot. So far the results have far exceeded my expectations.
My last one is a pink shunkokan…
Well the sudachi is an excellent choice if you want a small citrus fruit with an excellent flavor. It certainly packs a punch for its small size. I’d say it is better than key lime for two reasons, the sudachi fruit is slightly larger on average, and has far fewer seeds. The key lime contains about 10-12 seeds per fruit, while the sudachi contains only 3-5. We had a prolific key lime tree when I was a kid and while I loved the limeade and key lime pies my uncle and I made, the seeds were a drag.
I planted out a 2nd year seedling that I suspect is yuzu (which is highly nucellar, so likely a clone), but it came from a jar of seeds that included all sorts of stuff, so it is possible it was something else.
The ones I rooted have not grown much this year, I’ll likely plant a couple of each next year and give the rest away.
In terms of outdoor citrus, I did also plant out the sole rooted Dunstan citrumelo this year, and already have a trifoliate seedling that’s been out for over a year and seems happy.
When I checked with Four Winds, they said that the mandarins were grafted on trifoliate type rootstock. The example they gave is C-35.
The dunstan should do alright outside in Seattle. Do you think your location up a hill makes a positive difference for some cold sensitive plants?
I know of a dustan citrumelo growing and producing in Nottingham, England. And that’s not exactly known as a mild part of the UK the way southern England is.
A few dunstan i know about breeze through the winter in the Willamette Valley. Strangely, mine hasn’t produced any fruit yet. Despite being a grafted specimen on flying dragon rootstock and nearly 3’ tall it hasn’t even bloomed. The grafted yuzu I got on the same day has already made one small crop. There is a fairly decent size dunstan tree at One Green World, but I don’t know if it has produced yet.
Here’s a pic of the dunstan citrumelo in Nottingham. They describe it as a swingle crossed with a grapefruit.
Of all the testimonials I’ve read about ‘hardy’ citrus, the dunstan citrumelo gets the highest praise. Evidently it has the least trifoliate taste. Of course there can be significant variability from one tree to the next, so only time will tell.
Isn’t C-35 a citrange? Which I guess is still a hybrid of trifoliate and orange, but I wouldn’t call it a trifoliate rootstock, I usually think of that as referring more to pure trifoliate.
Yep, trifoliate rootstock is either referring to standard poncirus trifoliata or the flying dragon cultivar of poncirus.
From what I’ve read online C-35 is a citrange rootstock. Do you know anything about the fruit it produces?
I’ve gotten many mixed opinions about citrange fruit. Some say they are all horrible and not ever worth eating or even cooking with.
Such an opinion is understandable if these people are only comparing citrange fruit to high quality commercial citrus. But what about in comparison to a flying dragon fruit, standard trifoliata or other cultivars of citrange?
I’ve had a few people tell me that morton citrange is very much like a chinotto with no ‘off’ trifoliate taste. Others, in contrast, have told me Carrizo tastes horrible while troyer tastes like a lemon. The opinions are all over the map.
I have a Carrizo seedling growing outside in Oregon and now almost 8’ tall at 6 years old. Hopefully I’ll be finding out soon if the fruit is passable. Obviously I’m not expecting or even hoping for fruit as good as a navel. I’d be happy to have something good enough to make marmalade. If not, I’ll just saw off the top and graft some sudachi and meiwa scions to the thing.
Does anyone have a clue how long it takes for a Carrizo seedling to produce fruit? I’ve heard lemons can take seven years, and yuzu up to fifteen, but I’ve not come across any time estimates for a Carrizo seedling.
Has anybody grow Ponderosa lemon, is it a lemon or what? How about Pixie mandarin, is it a small plant.
I have 2 large citrus in the ground, not sure what they are, the tags are gone and I’m taking of grafting over with something. But I first need to remove them from the ground. They can’t take up that much space without producing anything.
I have two satsumas that died down to the graft. The rootstock is now about pencil diameter and a few feet tall. Best time to graft and best technique?
Hi Anthony,
I think I have your same problem and I have citrus in zone 8A but I had to buy a dome to put them in.
Most of mine have already gone through one winter except for the rangpur lime which I got this season.
The winter of 2022 to 23 was very rough here it seem like it lasted for over half the year and it started snowing November 1 but this year it hasn’t started snowing yet so I’m hopeful that maybe the winter won’t be as rough. My key lime died. 
My citrus are all in pots and I’m not sure if I ever could plant them in the ground or not but what I have 2 Owari satsuma on own roots, 2 owari satsuma on SD rootstock, 1 nagami kumquat, 1 Moro blood orange, 1 Australian finger lime, 1 rangpur lime, 1 Palestinian sweet lime.
How are your citrus trees doing now after all these years?
As a teen I learned graft citrus. Pretty easy.
These days we have an Orlando Tangelo, a Miho Satsuma and a Myer Lemon.
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