Thought I would start a new thread to kick off 2025 for sharing photos of your home-grown Citrus fruits.
Here is my montage from a few weeks ago of most of my Citrus that fruited in 2024 in The Woodlands, Texas (about 30 miles north of Houston).
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Citrus fruits are nothing if not beautiful!
A couple weeks ago I also made a simple montage of some locally-grown (Houston Texas area) Citrus to demonstrate both their beauty, and variability in size and color. From left to right: Hirado pummelo, Panzarella Cluster lemon, âMorrisâ (aka Minneola seedling) tangelo, Cara Cara navel orange, Makrut (aka Kaffir) lime, and Gold Bean (aka Hong Kong) kumquat. Citrus, gotta love âem!
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Amazing collection!
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Hereâs 4 of our 6 in Vista CA.
Nordmann Seedless Nagami Kumquat - ripe now.
Washington Navel - in a month or two.
Minneola - in a month or two.
Gold Nugget Mandarin - perhaps March.
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Here is fruit from my Gold Nugget a couple days ago and a second showing it next to a grapefruit for scale:
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Mine will color up a bit more (no green) before ripe. I always have to taste test one or two a few weeks apart before deciding they are ripe.
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Have you noticed any extra heat from the ring of cinder blocks? I really like that cinder block ring setup and have been thinking of doing that myself for some trees.
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Hereâs what we have going: Improved Myer, (2) Satsuma - already harvested about 100 fruit, Eureka Lemon, Oro Blanco, Washington Orange, Kishu in foreground with Gold Nugget in background. Weâre in SF Bay Area - raised bed, south facing.
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I envy you Citrus growers in California with your mild winters. Here in SE Texas in February 2021 we dropped down to 9 F and stayed below freezing for well over 36 hours. Even with banking 6 cubic yards of mulch on all my Citrus tree trunks and covering many of them with moving blankets and tarps, I wasnât sure any would survive. In fact I managed to keep them all alive, but most were frozen down to a few inches above the graft. My best success was covering a large group of Citrus trees (Salustiana orange, and about 1 dozen âquats) in the middle of an island in my circle driveway with a huge (30â x 40â) tarp weighted down with cinderblocks (no supplemental heat). Here is a âduringâ and âafterâ photo of that same island during our 12 F freeze in December 2022. Note that the ripe kumquats were still perfectly fine!
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Here is that same âkumquat islandâ a few days ago (we got down to 15 F two nights in a row last January and I hauled out that huge tarp yet again!). We havenât even dropped down to freezing yet this winter! Texas weather is nothing if not wacky!
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Awesome, my nagami fruit got mostly ruined 2 years ago when we had below freezing during Christmas (if I recall it was 14* at lowest point) the trees were unfazed but most of my fruit was lost. Luckily the Meiwa had all been harvested but the nagami wasnât ripe enough for me just yet.
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That is Indio Mandarinquat in my hand, Nagami to left, and Meiwa down low behind me. The huge Salustiana tree is in background. It has around 400-500 hundred fruits this year. Possibly my favorite Citrus of about 120 varieties I grow. From my experience Satsuma are more cold-hardy here that kumquats, even if the literature suggests the opposite should be the case.
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How does the indio taste? Iâve heard polar opposite stories so itâs kept me from adding it.
Dead-ripe the Indio is still pretty tart for eating out-of-hand (I do though). Underripe it makes amazing pie (think Key Lime pie, but better), excellent marmalade, and awesome stewed fruit (with sugar added). My Indio reaches minimal edibility in December, but absent a hard freeze, is best by late January. Pretty seedy. No longer available through Texasâ Certified Budwood Program, so I get a lot of requests for budwood, grafts, or even seeds from local gardeners. Some think it is the best Citrus theyâve tasted, others react like they are being fed battery acid.
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Also on my âKumquat Islandâ is Thomasville Citrangequat. It ripens very late (February) for the first bloom cycle, and even later in year for the additional bloom rounds. I find it marginally edible, but a few of my âtastersâ have raved about it (two even called their favorites)! It is probably winter hardy well into USDA Zone 8 (or even 7?), but ripens so late that the fruit probably never avoids freezes there. I use it mostly for rootstock.
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Itâs this exact variation which has me hesitant on it. Same with the orangequat
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Nippon Orangequat never sweetens. Indio at least reaches edibility. Nippon probably could be used for battery acid!
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Nice specimen of Ficus johannis subsp. afghanistanica under that kumquat.