In our home we consume many bags of cuties. I am trying to pick a few varieties for the home garden.
The purpose is for fresh eating. We don’t juice much. More sweet the better for kids. Prefer seedless or very few seeds. Prefer easy to peel but if its a great variety can just use a knife instead of hand peeling.
I have shortlisted a few but would like to hear from citrus experts here on which ones you recommend? If you have tasted any of these varieties could you describe the flavor?
Clementine Dec to Jan
Owari Satsuma Dec to Jan
Kishu Dec to Jan
Tango Feb to Apr
Gold Nugget Mar to Jun
Shasta gold Mar to May
I’m not an expert, but I do have a Pixie Tangerine in the backyard. It’s a young tree and so we only had a few fruit this year. They were very tasty, almost seedless, and were not too difficult to peel. Just pulled the last fruit off this weekend, probably ripe Jan/Feb.
Im partial to kishu. Really productive tree, true zipper skin, hangs on the tree for a fairly decent time and really good flavor. Gold nugget is really good, but ive only had this from farmers market no experience growing them. Those two would have you covered for a couple of months.
I would get Kishu and Gold Nugget for sure. I haven’t ever gotten a seed in those and they are easy to peel and delicious. Tango is very good as well, sets very well, but not as easy to peel as the above two. It also isn’t completely seedless. Considered seedless, but probably averages 1 seed per fruit.
Just added Yosemite Gold and Tahoe Gold this year, so can’t comment on those.
Have you considered Lee-Nova (88-2) as an early mandarin?
Any Mandarin will be better than store bought. Can’t go wrong with owari. I grow Miho armstrong and Sumo/Dekopon/shiranui. You’ll need some patience. Mandarins don’t make their best fruit for 5-10 years.
If you had not already heard of them, many CRFG chapters have exchanges coming up (like this one ) where you can pick up budwood for grafting citrus and other non-deciduous trees.
Harris citrus and briteleaf nursery are both good. Harris is low on Mandarin stock right now. I think last year’s hurricane messed up a lot of Florida growers. Shiranui is the Sumo that everyone loves.
New to fruits I meant this to reply to you but for some reason I replied to myself. Lol
Mike
I believe all of the CRFG chapters have eliminated Citrus from their exchanges to help reduce disease spread. So unfortunately that option probably won’t be there.
For early season, Satsuma and Kishu, both are excellent and ripen in mid November. Satsuma is more rich and Kishu is more intense. There is nothing like a chilled glass of pure Satsuma juice and a great way to fend off sickness. For midseason, around mid January, Tango is what we refer to as a tangerine. Very intense and rich flavor, very dark orange color, having more tang than any of my other mandarins, a real treat! For the lateseason Gold Nugget, probably what I would call the perfect citrus. Very sweet and rich flavor, a hint of tang, large size and just plain delicious! They are ready here in February and should be eaten by early April, before any hot weather. I know Gold Nugget says march 1st ripening but imo they are best in February and early March here in the Sacramento area. The Gold series is not as good here, but still worth growing. I kept my Yosemite Gold, it has a bit of a different flavor going on, like maybe pineapple notes. I returned my Tahoe Gold after eating some of the fruits before planting. Being a large 85 dollar tree, it was not worth it. Probably would have been better though after a few years in the ground. My Yosemite Gold is getting better every season so it will stay. If you can try getting your citrus on standard rootstock, seems to make a difference with flavor, juiciness, productivity, and less seeds. Just prune to your favored height. I would not worry about the Sumo mandarin, Gold Nugget is much better, imo, and about the same size. Here is a few pics Gold Nugget.
For citrus part, it’s not really an exchange, they will be selling certified virus-free citrus budwood from CCPP, which was bulk-ordered by the CRFG chapter. People cannot bring their own citrus material.
I’m also in 9b with small influence from the Delta Breezes.
I regularly apply Epsom Salt, and even the Miho Wase Satsuma (the earliest ripening one, sometimes as early as October), would taste as good as the Halo (the brand that replaced Cuties) from the stores.
What’s been good in my yard are Celemenules, Miyagawa, Gold Nugget, Pixie, W. Murcott, Tango, Corsica #1, Page, Seedless Kishu (very easy to peel, tiny but they’re wonderful, sometimes sold as Cherry Mandarins because of their size).
Yosemite Gold, even though giant size for a mandarin, doesn’t taste that good, but it was grafted to a sour orange rootstock, so I might try that one again on a trifoliate orange. Shasta Gold, I might have fruits for the first time early next year perhaps as it grew into a big branch on my multi-graft and have lots of flower buds showing for the first time.
Ten of my mandarins are grafted on one Flying Dragon Rootstock, and they all tasted good. Tree remained small, just 4 feet for over ten years, and has never grown that much but always bear good quality size fruits, but not a lot, since the tree remained small. Am starting to move over some of my good tasting citruses into a trifoliate rootstock.
They’re also selling certified rootstocks from nurseries to graft the CCPP budwoods. Almost entire California is quarantined and literal interpretation of the quarantine is that you can’t graft even from one of your citrus plants to another within your yard.
So I ended up ordering CCPP budwoods to have additional grafts on my tree even if I have the cultivars already.
They’d taste like the Halo brand (except for the Kishu which has a different honey like flavor). Here’s how I would rank them from best to good
Kishu (tiny but excellent)
Gold Nugget
Tango
Clementine
Shasta gold
Owari Satsuma
Try to see if you can find Miyagawa if you wanted sweetness, it has one of the highest brix.
