I simmer them for 10+ minutes with some water and squeeze the juice from the pulp. While they’re cooking, I add a stick of cinnamon, several whole cloves, several allspice berries, a little vanilla extract, half a lemon’s juice, half a cup sugar per pie, and 1/4 cup cornstarch or the starch that freezes fine I forget the name of…Sure Gel? It ends up (usually/hopefully) gelled enough it doesn’t run and with a spicy dark berry sort of flavor.
It’s my way of tricking my dad into eating elderberry. 
Kimbrough is one of several Satsuma varieties I no longer have growing (I still have 14). I had it in-ground in my last orchard and did not have time to graft a scion when we sold the place in 2015. I left behind a couple of other Satsumas (variegated, Mr. Mac) as well as about 15 other citrus varieties that I do wish I had grabbed (Ugli, Encore, Temple, Kinnow, Melogold, Cipo, variegated calamondin, variegated kumquat, Rosso lemon, etc.). I had a short timeframe to try to graft over 120 different citrus varieties onto rootstock, and ran out of both (time and rootstock) before we closed on the sale. Now I can no longer get budwood for most of them in Texas and the new homeowners let most of the trees die down to rootstock in the 2021 freeze. Live and learn. Always keep “back-ups” of your trees.
Here is a collage I made on Monday of about 40 of my citrus varieties that fruited this year, minus Australian Desert Lime (it ripened and dropped months ago) and Nova (varmint got all the fruit). We have had very few cool nights this fall in southeast Texas, so most of the fruit peels are still quite green. For anyone living near Houston, I am taking all these to the Texas Rare Fruit Growers’ free annual citrus tasting event this Saturday morning, and again to John Panzarella’s annual citrus openhouse in Lake Jackson the following Saturday. Please make an effort to visit one or both of these events if you live in the area.
Hi John - that is a very cool collage of your fruits. Tell me, your citrus ripen already at this time? Here where I live only my Bearss lime are maturing and 4season lemon is starting as well…my clementines and oranges still have a month to go at least
Ponkan is an excellent Mandarin in my opinion (it makes my list of recommended citrus varieties). A little seedy, but large fruit, very tasty, firm-fleshed, easy to peel, amazingly productive. Here is one of my in-ground ponkan trees a few years ago that I had to build a 12’ tall tripod over to prevent the fruit load from snapping off the entire trunk:
Southeastern Texas gets very high accumulated heat units during the summer, so our citrus ripen internally pretty early, often well before they color up externally. I start tasting our “wase” Satsumas in September. It is a good thing, because hard freezes in January can destroy any under-ripe citrus fruit still hanging on trees, so late-ripening varieties (e.g. Encore, Valencia, Pixie, etc.) may get destroyed before getting sufficiently sweet to pick.
I love Buddhas hand for zest. I’ve been debating getting a cheap bush/cutting on its own roots. How easy/hard is it to grow? Will it manage nicely in a container?
Buddha’s Hand has to be grown in a container (too freeze sensitive), but will happily grow and produce in large one for many years. Mine is in about a 10 gallon container. It roots very easily from cuttings. You can zest it, but the peel is not bitter like many citrus, so I make amazing candied peel out of my entire Buddha’s Hand fruit. A gardening friend of mine called it “the crack cocaine of fruit.” 
John, I think I will be in a similar situation in a few years. If you could do it again with more notice, woild you recommend me grafting onto flying dragon and keeping the back ups in containers? Or should i just multigraft a few dwarfs so that i have as much varieties on a few plants instead of one tree for each variety??
Agreed it is indeed very seedy. This was the first year that producing 5 fruits, last year it had only one but the branch broke due to winds so I couldn’t count the taste of it as it was underripe. I can’t say anything bad about it, only that it pales in comparison to my Owaris.
I am a big fan of multi-grafting (I once had an in-ground citrus with 26 different cultivars on it!) for “back-up” purposes, as long as the tree(s) can be adequately protected from bad freeze back (I.e. container-grown, or very careful freeze protection of in-ground trees). Containers give the option of portability if a required move come up, but fruit production is limited.
The skin also looked to be rather loose, another indicator that the fruit might be overripe.
I’m not 100% certain that this is the post that I was thinking of, but the skin on a citrus loosening as it ripens is mentioned here:
that could be. im going to need a larger sample size 
I am surprised that there are seeds in your Bearss lime (Persian lime is a triploid and hence shouldn’t have any seeds). Are you sure it isn’t a Bearss lemon instead?
I got lucky on the grapefruit. My 4 blood orange from seeds is a different matter. It’s 8 years and going into the 9th year. No flower and no fruit. They are only 6 - 7 ft tall. I have 4 of them. 2 stayed green even in winter and the other 2 are half a sleep because half their leaves are yellow. Maybe they will not turn in to blood orange, but just sweet orange.
Waiting 30 years for fruits is too long. I probably graft or chop the tree down after 10 years. I should have start mandarin from seed instead of blood orange because mandarin from seed tend to fruit faster.
Interesting info citrus. My blood orange trees and a lemon from seed was started around the same time 8 years ago. The lemon tree shoot straight up last year and exceed 12 feet. It’s currently at 15 feet. It did flowers last year, but no fruit. The blood orange are 6 - 7 ft tall. If 12 ft is the goal to fruit, then the blood orange are going to take awhile.
I have a trifoliate that is grafted to hybrid. It didn’t do any thing for 2 years. Then it exploded in the 3 year. If trifoliate can make the blood orange fruit faster, then I’m going to graft onto it.
