I’ve been doing the same thing.
December would be fine too, though I suspect October given how warm the late summer and early fall is here. We are often in the 80’s from mid June until mid September with many days above 90.
My meyers aren’t ready until the end of November and I don’t have any problems with mild freezes damaging the fruit. I’ve exposed the meyer fruit unprotected to 25 F and they weren’t damaged at all. For that matter the tree leaves weren’t damaged either. So I suspect the xie Shan will be fine too.
I have several clones of this meyer and seedlings of another prolific producer that’s in a pot. Next winter I’m going to see how low they can take. From what I’ve seen the meyer lemons in my Santa Rosa neighborhood endured temps into the low 20’s and high teens with no damage at all. I’ve never seen damaged fruit either from those temps. Perhaps the tree creates a slightly warmer microclimate under the canopy.
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In my greenhouse the meyer lemon trees and meiwa kumquat have fruit that keeps swelling all winter, albeit very slowly. They bloom until around Christmas. That’s with low temp between 37-42.
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I meant to respond to this, I’ve seen the same thing with the Prague scionwood you sent me last spring, grafts were done almost a year ago now. Out of the five grafts I did, only one actually failed fully, the other four appeared to callus and stayed green, but did not bud out all summer long. I accidentally removed one of them because I didn’t look closely and only saw it was green after cutting it off, but here are the remaining three.
A bark graft on an established mandarin tree in my greenhouse (just before this photo I pruned back the mandarin branches hard, hoping to force the graft):
A cleft graft on a TDE mandarin seedling:
An inverted T-bud on an established TDE3 mandarin (failed to grow when I removed the branch above the bud last summer, hoping to force it):
That last one looks like the bud site will soon be covered in callus, so hopefully it grows soon. I’m considering pointing a grow light at it this spring to encourage it further.
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This silly plant I tried killing. It survived the cold snap of doom with only dropping a few leaves. I don’t like it very much, the oranges are super sour and never get bigger than golf balls. I got it at a box store 6 years ago and don’t have the heart to trash it. All the tag says is cold hardy orange/citrus. I did not know any better then. It does have a lovely floral scent flower, like most citrus do. The only reason I post this thing is how surprisingly well it took those cold temps. No love whatsoever from me.
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Is it not a calamondin?
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Definitely would be my guess, but I didn’t realize those could take that level of cold without more damage.
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I wish I knew. Local lowes. The tag had no other details.
Same thing happen with my citrus grafting. It remain green all of last year. Then I start to see sign of leaves this year. I’m guessing it take citrus longer time to heal because of the thin skin and lack of sap.
gotta be calamondin. if you think of it as more of a lime with orange skin, you might dislike it less. The skin is sweet and tasty once you squeeze the juice out.
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I didn’t see this with any of the other citrus I grafted last year, most of the others started growing pretty quickly once it got warm in summer. What kind of citrus were you grafting last year?
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The root stock are Meyer lemon or hybrid. 2 trees and they turn somewhat yellow during winter. I’m creating a cocktail. Grafting navel, Texas red, lime, and mandarin.
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You might be having compatibility problems. Meyer in particular, and lemons in general, are sometimes unexpectedly incompatible with other citrus. For example, Meyer lemon is incompatible with the Swingle citrumelo rootstock.
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You may be right about compatibility issue. Some of the grafts does work, but it does take more time. There is a couple of grafts that was done around April 2023 and it’s now leaving out, as well as some that was done during late summer of 2023. Only a few, a lime and a navel scion that took within a month.
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I wonder if anyone has tried growing out Prague seeds to see which half of the chimera controls the reproductive bits? @Stanthecitrusman or anyone else? Also curious whether they appear to be nucellar or zygotic.
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One would expect the satsuma side, right? If the cells for the ovary are satsuma, which they should be since that’s what the fruit ends up being, then the ovules also ought to be satsuma.
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That would be the guess, but figure it’s better to test and be sure. Also, it would confirm that it’s absolutely a chimera (but I have no reason to second-guess that part).
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Its basically seedless. If I have ever found a seed in one of the fruits, I dont remember it. If I did…I probably just tossed it.
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I’m guessing it depends on which cell layers are Satsuma. According to this paper
Plant chimeras are plants composed of cells with more than two genotypes. According to the theory of ‘Tunica-Corpus’, the shoot apical meristem (SAM) of dicotyledonous plants is composed of three cell layers, namely, L1, L2 and L3, from the outermost layer [1]. In citrus fruits, the juice sacs and epidermal pericarps are derived from L1; the color and aroma of the fruit rind, seeds and segment walls are developed from L2; vascular bundles are produced by L3; and fruit shape is determined by L2 and/or L3 [2].
If the fruit looks and tastes like a Satsuma, I guess that implies that Poncirus makes up L3 only? And that the seeds will be Satsuma? It’s probably more complicated than that.
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I was wondering if the offspring would even have any poncirus genes if its a chimera and imagined the answer would be convoluted. XD