1.Fragrant Pear
In 2012, I went back China and visited my father-in-law. My brother-in-law’s company gave a box of Fragrant pears. It really amazed with its taste. From its appearance, I guessed it is most possibly Kuerle Fragrant pear.
Yulu Fragrant pear is a late hybrid variety with Kuerle as the mother and snowflake as the father. It keeps the taste of kuerle fragrant pear, but with more edible part. It was first tried planting in the study station inXi county, Shanxi. The special weather there is huge temperature difference between day and night due to yellow soil and platuo.
I got a scionwood of Yulu Fragrant pear from my friend to graft on my flowering pear trees two years ago. It takes 2-3 years to bear fruits for high grafts. So I expect to have some fruits this year.
Shatangju
In 2012, another fruit got my attention is Shatangju. “Shatang” is sugar in English. Shatangju should be translated as sugar orange. Yes, it is very sweet, tiny but seedless with very thin skin, easily peeled.
I just got scions from my friend and grafted on my lemon tree. Hope that I can eat Sugar orange here.
The second generation of Zhanhua winter delight
Three years ago, I went back China in Summer time and stayed there till late Aug. I found the jujube fruits of the second generation of Zhanhua winter delight in the fruit store, 80RMB per Kg. First I bought half kg to try it. Then I found I can’t stop eating it. I kept back to the store to buy more. So sweet, so crunchy, best jujube fruits that I tasted ever.
My friend shared a scion with one bud one year ago. I got one fruit the first year and four last year. So it had trouble to set fruits with graft on the sour jujube rootstocks. I will try to grow its own root by green cuttings this year to see if it could help increasing production.
Grapes
In my hometown, there is a village called Dawei. This village is famous for growing grapes. Every late July or early August, my sister will go there to buy a lot of grapes. They taste so sweet, full of grape flavor. It tastes like kyoho grape, but much sweeter than kyoho grape. Its size is big like Fujiminori grape, which is also called “ping pong” grape since Fujiminori grape can be as big as “ping pong” ball. According to Baidu wiki, the Brix of Fujiminori grape is only 16. I think the Brix of the grapes from Dawei is more than 16. I don’t know if it is the reason of variety or the special growing ways that the farmers in Dawei have. I got to find out.
Thanks！
I found a long topic about Xinjiang Frangrant pear one year ago. It seems that a lot of fellows here are interested in it. I shared some scions of Yulu Fragrant pear with fellows here last year.
To the fellows Who grafted Yulu Fragrant pear last year, Yulu Fragrant pear takes 3-4 years for small trees to bear fruits and 2-3 years for high grafts ( grafted to mature trees).
So be patient, guys.
If you see the grafted parts grow very fast, but no flowers, don’t worry about them. They will have profuse flowers once they get mature.
Probably. But it is only about 1/3 size of “cuties”. My kids used to like “cuties” orange. But they don’t want them any more after they tasted Shatangju in China.
Shangtaju tastes much better than cuties.
Sweet, and strong orange flavor.
I have five Kishu trees. We like them very much. The fruits used to be small. After we added more types of mandarins and oranges, some of them somehow get bigger but still seedless and sweet. One of my sister has one Kishu and many lemon trees in the same small yard and the fruits are kind of bland or sour, so you have to watch out for cross-pollinating. I don’t know what happened to the “cuties” in the stores. We bought a lot because they were juicy and sweet. The last few years they became sour and not so juicy, people I know stopped buying them. Maybe they were harvested while still unripe and had color sprayed on?
Or from a lot of Asian places? That how we ended up with Citrus greening disease? I know we always missed some of the fruits we grew up with, but there are so many wonderful new types here. To have a lot of trees killed is beyond sadness.
99% of citrus does not require pollination. In fact it is nearly impossible to cross pollinate. I’ve seen mis-information about citrus pollination so often I made a web page about it. Common citrus requiring pollination are tangelos, pummelo, and meyer lemon. Most of the rest, NO.
I maybe wrong but I read somewhere that the commercial citrus growers sometimes cover the trees when in bloom to keep the fruit seedless. When I had my first Kishu, the grapefruit tree nearby had big, yellow flesh, sweet mandarin-like fruits, what they call the cocktail type I guess. After that kishu died, it went back to produce the white grapefruit. I had that one replaced by a nectarine now.
Maybe someone with more experience can give me some good explanations on this. Thanks a lot for your help.
We have more than 100 trees in the back yard, mostly in 20~25 gallon containers after we ran out of in ground space. Not all the citrus, or stone fruits, or grapes have fruit every year. We were always amazed how the fruits on some trees are not quite the same each year. One year the Splash pluot became big red instead of the small yellow fruits Last year I have three different figs on the same branch, only the Panache never changes. Only one year the Zinfandel turned into big red seedless grapes, we have Thompson and Flame too. As for citrus, I have a Dancy to pollinate the Minneola tangelo but others are self fruitful. One of the Tango had two very different types of fruit on the same branch. I have no idea how it happened, some seemed impossible, but we were happy and enjoyed all the surprises that nature, or maybe the bugs or the bees, accomplished .
I have a regular Zinfandel, which has nearly black skin, full of seeds and liquidy inside for many years. In 2017 it had so many big red bunches that looked, textured, and tasted like table grape which were very sweet. The Flame seedless and Thompson are on the other side of the yard so there were no mixed up. Sadly, it came back to the usual seedy fruit last year which I used for juice.
