Since we had a slight freeze, i picked xie shan and the uga changsha for my wife to taste. Reviews to come!
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Xie Shan was excellent. Very sweet with a nice tart finish! Very good fruit on a small plant. I canât wait for Miho to start producingâŚ
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Of the 14 different Satsuma varieties I grow, I consider Xie Shan one of the best. I assume the UGA Changsha was quite seedy and not as good. Let me know if you think (first hand) it has merits besides good cold hardiness.
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I was told this was a citrange but I donât think this thing is a citrangeâŚ
The peel has noticable trifoliate skunk on par with most hybrids. The pith is thick and very white, I wasnât brave enough to try it. Interior was juicy and lemon like in texture. Flavor was mostly lemon like with a bit of trifoliate funk. Sour but a little sweet, about halfway between a true lemon and a Meyer lemon. No orange flavor, no sour orange bitterness, Iâm really pretty sure itâs not a citrange.
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Please donât be afraid to never try it!
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I havenât opened the second one yet, I may try the pith on that one. The pulp itself is good, I ate the whole of the first one, but the taste I had of the peel was deeply unpleasant so I stayed away from it and the pith.
Whatâs interesting to me is this is almost certainly a citremon, but it doesnât appear to be the citremon thatâs most commonly circulated, the one with the bizarre fruit shapes almost like a citron. This citremon has more typical lemon shaped fruits, at least the two I got.
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Aha, I see now that you were speaking of the pith in your earlier post and not having tried it. Please forgive me, Iâm most certainly not suggesting consuming the pith of that fruit.
The uga changsha was seedless this year. There is a meyer lemon close by and if the meyer is blooming heavily, seed count jumps up to maybe 5-8 per fruit.
The fruit is actually decent. Only drawbacks so far is that it doesnât have a lot of acid. So it has less contrast than fruit like the xie shan or gold nugget. If you think of the perfect satsuma, Sweet Frost is on on the too little acid side, while Sugar Belle is on the too much acid side.
And last flaw is that some if the fruit is sometimes dry. I dont know if its just random or if I need to pick earlier or later.
Its a 7/10 fruit, but to me worth it due to the cold hardiness in my zone. But I have started grafting a few better tasting kinds on it to get some more variety.
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Obligatory picture of kishu. Only 5 more left. I cheated bc the tree came with 75-80 fruit. I thinned it to 30. Weâve been slowly indulging for the last 2 weeks, but did try some in October. Recent ones are much better. Easy to peel, wonderful flavor, and I love how puffed up and juicy they are. We get great tasting citrus here, but it travels a long way, and I can see the difference in the water content. Assuming I didnât set it back too much and we get through indoors winter, looking forward to letting it keep more fruit next year.
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Stella: FYI, Kishu is one of the mandarins that makes it onto my âBest Citrus for Southeast Texasâ list:
To make it onto the list, the cultivar must be available for sale legally in Texas, and have outstanding eating and/or cultural characteristics.
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Yesterday I harvested another selection of early ripening Citrus fruits (including some Flying Dragon rootstock). Here is my Palestinian Sweet lime:
Brownâs Select Satsuma:
Bumper Satsuma (technically a changsat):
Miho Wase Satsuma:
And Flying Dragon trifoliate rootstock:
More to come as time allowsâŚ
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A few years ago I shipped a box of my Kishu fruit to my then 5-year-old grandnephew Caleb. Knowing his sister and parents would easily wipe out his fruit, I put an âwarning labelâ on the box that said âIf your name isnât Caleb, then keep your hands out!â My niece appreciated the help with policing.
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Bears lime looks mostly ready. Yuzu needs a few weeks, I think. Variegated pink lemon is not very⌠variegated this year for some reason. Iâm going to be turning this little cage into a mini greenhouse soon.
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Those flying dragon fruits donât appear to be as seedy at the fruits that I harvested from several trifoliate orange earlier this year.
Have you observed much difference in the amount of seeds between the two?
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I harvested the seeds out of about 50 âwildâ (I.e. naturalized) t.f. a days weeks ago, and about 75 f.d. fruits a couple weeks ago (see post above). I donât think there is an appreciable difference in the seediness. The single sliced f.d. fruit above contained 25 fully-formed seeds (but it was a pretty small fruit). Usually they have closer to 40-60 fruits when larger. The âwildâ t.f. I harvest in the woods around here (se Texas) also have about 50-60 seeds each. In past years I have attempted to make the meagre juice I extract along with the seeds drinkable with lots of sugar, but have never succeeded. Just canât get rid of the acrid oil taste. An herbalist that took my formal citrus class locally this past week told me she removes all the flesh from âwildâ t.f. fruits, dries the peels completely, and uses them in an herbal tea she makes. Sound horrible!
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Your yuzu look great! I am a bit jealous, as my in-ground yuzu (se Texas) hasnât fruited since our 10 F freeze in 2021. I have Asian friends that are waiting for me to produce some yuzu fruits for them! About your Bearss lime, as you may know lemons and limes can be harvested any time after they have sufficient juice to use. They do not need to color-up. Commercially both lemons and limes are harvested by size, not color, and lemons get de-greened with ethylene on the way to market. I tend to let my Persian limes (I.e. Bearss) turn light yellow-green before picking them, but this risks getting stylar-end breakdown in some of them, which can quickly ruin the fruit.
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Give the method I outlined in the other thread a try, I hope that you will be pleasantly surprised by the effects of the aging process.
That is great to know, because the fruits facing south are much larger. I can maybe pick them, turn the pots a little, and get the smaller ones some more sun. Itâs an off balance little tree, having died back to the ground 2 years ago.
Do you know why the variegated lemon wouldnât have the whiteish edge on its leaves of greenish stripes on the fruit this year?
OK, I will go collect some more very ripe feral trifoliate fruits and try your aging process. Perhaps I should update my Will first. 
For years I have been telling folks my âold timerâs recipeâ for trifoliate orange drink: âcollect one trifoliate orange fruit, dissolve a pound of sugar in a gallon of water, throw away the trifoliate fruit, drink and enjoy.â
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Non-striped fruit and non-variegated leaves on a variegated Eureka (pink) lemon tree suggests that one (or more) branches may have reverted to non-variegation. I have a very large (45 gallon) variegated Eureka that sometimes pushes out non-variegated branches (either pure green with green fruits, or pure white with completely-white fruits). I will go take some photos in a few minutes and post them here. Interestingly, all the fruits (pure green, striped, and pure white) are still pink inside. Wacky chimera!
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