While I’m envious of those of you with larger areas to plant, one benefit of only having my suburban lot is a couple 100 ft hoses reach every corner. I hope to some day have that same problem, though!
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I have grown Champagne in shady conditions in the Santa Rosa area of California. I love loquats and I would really like to hear more about growing them here in the Umpqua Valley…
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We are too new to growing loquats, yet in time we will have our own opinions on growing in colder conditions. It’s exciting.
The trees them selves can vary in cold hardiness, there are the cold sensitive ones too. Some varieties can survive zone 7a easily, as you know few of those can fruit in such cold.
The ‘Harvest’ variety should be able to fruit for you, do you have it? It’s Mid to Late season, and it fruited well one year that the cold weather destroyed the crops of most other varieties in a large planting of many different varieties.
Also the variety ‘Bradenton’ should be able to fruit for you, it fruited well that same year, which is surprising since it’s Early-Mid season.
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@alanmercieca , I grow many of Adam Karsten’s varieties including Harvest, Sunset, sugarcane.
They all had flower buds last year but dropped blossoms in the January deep freeze.
Below -5 to -7c and without some micro climate protection, every flower bud will be destroyed.
I have identified 4 trees in the Seattle area that fruit every year. They all have 3 key attributes
- Very old and large.
- Flowers/fruits on lower and protected branches only
- Close to a building that provides heat.
Smaller trees in the open are going to have trouble IME. without some protection like Reemay or similar fabric.
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How long does it stay below freezing in your area? Also are there strong winds when that freezing happens?
I think it stayed well below freezing for about 10 days last year. All in one stretch. It was nasty.
Then there were other freezing spells too. Loquats had no chance.
I LOVE loquats. I was lucky that I came up to Richmond BC Canada last weekend and many Chinese grocery stores were selling air-shipped loquats from Brazil. Very large and juicy. I ate 5 packages lol.
That being aside, really disappointed to know that loquats rarely produce fruit in our region. I planted a loquat tree earlier this year hoping it would generate many fresh fruits… I wonder if anyone got it to produce fruit successfully without creating a microclimate? If that’s impossible, can we grow loquats in containers and bring them inside in order to fruit?
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Peng, welcome!
You can definitely grow them outdoors and bring them inside or just put them under the eaves of your roof in the winter. Or in a protected car port or porch. Maybe use some Christmas lights to get some additional warmth to them.
Its best to not bring them inside a heated house.
Put them out in the sun in march and it should be all good.
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That is the sort of thing I thought might have happened. Where I live I have rarely seen it freezing temperatures for more than 8 hours. Usually no more than 4 hours. Here I’d be more worried about the dropping down to about 3 degrees Fahrenheit, yet that is so rare that I would not be worrying about that happening here most years.
ramv, I saw that you successfully got loquats to fruit last year. Did you do anything to protect them when temperature dropped below 32F? Is there a variety that has more cold-resistant flowers?
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32F is no problem. When it gets below 27-28F there will be an issue.
To protect blossoms, I used reemay fabric thrown over the tree. A few incandescent Christmas lights for additional warmth.
Some varieties may be more resistant but in my trials of over 30 varieties I haven’t yet found one that is particularly more resistant. Many are still young and I don’t yet have full answers.
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I’m closer to the water than @ramv but my neighborhood has terrible cold air drainage, so I’m not sure how our temperatures compared for that freeze event. In my yard it was 6 (or 7) days in total, starting and ending in the teens, with a high in the mid-20s the first day, then highs just below or just above freezing each day after that:
My next-coldest freeze this last winter was in late February:
But you can see there were a number of other times it dipped down to around (or just below) 30°F (none earlier in the winter):
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Some of my loquats are now in full bloom with all the intoxicating aroma that the blooms bring.
Bees and Anna hummingbirds are fully active pollinating. The 27F last night was no problem at all for the loquats.
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It’s snowing here. It is expected to stay above 28F. But I’m taking no chances with the loquat blooms. There are 100s of potential fruit on over a dozen varieties.
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I had a mix-up with a loquat scion order (my fault, wrote a confusing note on my order) that got shipped now instead of spring, so now I need to decide between grafting in winter or hoping the scions will keep until spring.
Has anyone had much luck grafting loquat here in winter? How long do the scions typically keep?
I’m thinking I’ll try in January, they should keep that long at least, and maybe the second half of the winter will be warm…
Loquats scions will keep surprisingly long. But I am not sure they will keep until June when it is ideal to graft.
Do you have a young tree you could bring indoors. Or a heated greenhouse?
You could graft in Feb March that way.
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Unfortunately my only loquat seedlings at the moment are in the ground outside.
I could probably dig up a quince sucker from my yard (my neighbor has a flowering quince that sends dozens of suckers under the fence every year), and see if I can get that growing in the greenhouse over the next month or so, but those suckers are a lot thinner diameter than the scions, so it might be tricky to graft on them.
If it isn’t a particularly rare variety, I would try it in March and if it fails, look for scions again in April/May when folks in California,Florida start pruning.
If rare, I would buy some rootstock!
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It’s Strawberry loquat, from Fruitwood, so not rare but they usually only offer for a brief period in winter. I had it thrown in with my avocado scion order. I have two scions so maybe I’ll try one in a few weeks and another in March if that one looks to have failed by then.
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I have an Int’l Dist. seedling growing in ghouse that really has no useful purpose. Just looked too healthy to discard. It is still putting out new growth - so good time to graft it. Two years ago I grafted loquat in Jan in ghouse and got 100% take. I could prune it down to 8", put roots in wet shavings, and mail it to you. Might be worth it!
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