drool. Think I have to start getting some more of these for container culture up here.
Yes, kumquats will often bloom a second or even third time in a year. Those later fruits ripen at about the same time as the first bloom ones, but are smaller, far less numerous, and tarter.
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My Fukushu with spent flowers and new growth
wrong pick. Meiwa from seed above. Fukushu on Flying dragon below
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I took all the papaya and all the Nagami (tart) kumquats to a nearby monastery of 16 Vietnamese Dominican friars. They love green papaya in salads and know how to cook it too. We take them 100s of pounds of fruits and vegetables every year. We trade home-grown organic produce for their prayers. I think we get the better side of the deal.
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Your Meiwa looks like it may have bloomed a second time (from the green fruit present at the same time as ripe ones). I find all the ‘quats prone to some repeat flowering during the year, with much lighter fruit set in subsequent flowering cycles.
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Yes, I protected most of my in-ground citrus for this low-20s F freeze. The forecast low was 18 F, but in the end we only dropped to 23F. I did not protect any Satsuma trees (we have about 14 cultivars), kumquats, limequats, keraji, Orlando, Fairchild, quite a few finger limes, and several smaller citrus trees (oranges and mandarins) that I just simply ran out of time to cover. So far the Satsuma and kumquats look fine, the others will likely lose some leaves, but I don’t see any split bark.
My citrus protection strategy for low-20s F freezes and above about 15 F involves wrapping trees with string or cord to bring the branch canopy in closer to the trunk to make them easier to cover:
Then I wrap or drape them with a moving blanket held in place with plastic clamps:
Then I cover them with a plastic tarp (to shed rain, ice, snow from the blankets) that is weighted down on the edges with rocks, bricks, or tacked to the ground with metal landscape pins or pole barn spikes:
A few trees I simply cover with a B.A.T. (big-ass tarp) :
For sub-15F freezes (not this one) I will mound fresh hardwood mulch up the trunk to protect some of the scion wood and lowermost canopy branches. I have far too many trees to use any supplemental heat (e.g. Christmas lights, heat lamps, etc.). Of hundreds of in-ground citrus, I haven’t lost any to freezes, including our record-setting 9 F freeze in February 2021. Droughts are another matter, as I have lost some citrus trees in the extreme hot-dry Texas summers here.
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Thanks for explaining that.
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Do you grow any lemons or grapefruit in-ground in your zone ? I am in 9a and have mine in pots I can bring in from the cold temps.
Yes, the following lemons are all growing in-ground: Improved Meyer, Lisbon, Eureka, New Zealand Lemonade, Ponderosa, Butwal (sweet, aka acidless), Jara (an lemon/citron hybrid from Bangladesh), and Ujukitsu “lemon”. These are our in-ground grapefruits: Rio Red, Ruby Red, Bloomsweet, Oroblanco “grapefruit”, Peerless, Golden, and Cocktail “grapefruit” (technically a tangelo). Lemon trees, and to a lesser extent grapefruit trees, tend to “wake up” early and start pushing flower buds in January. They need substantial cold protection for freezes below about 28 F to preserve any hope of fruit.
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You must be doing a good job protecting them to grow all of those. Last years Snowmageden killed most people’s citrus in this area that hadn’t already been killed in the previous hard freezes since 2020. I saved my Arctic Frost in-ground with a lot of protection with a heat lamp, frost cloth and a large tarp.
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I just got done reading through a webpage that details the latest Polar Vortex forecasts for February and early March. It looks really bad, possibly a nearly carbon copy repeat of the February 2021 outbreak that devastated Texas and the Southeast. Not good! Here is the page if you want to read the bad news yourself: Stratospheric Warming Confirmed: Polar Vortex Collapse to Bring Major Weather Disruption in the Coming Weeks » Severe Weather Europe
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Well, that’s not good. Thanks for sharing the article.
I will either need to go buy even more moving blankets, or save my money and move to Hawaii. 
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Just before our first hard freeze hit SE Texas a few weeks ago (we dropped to a low of 23 F and were below freezing for about 28 hours straight), I picked many of our last citrus fruits. Here are the last two Gold Nugget Nandarins I harvested:
The last few Tango Mandarins:
A few Salustiana oranges:
A few of many Variegated (pink) Eureka lemons:
I will start a new batch of limoncello out of the lemon zest, and make either pies or (pink!) lemonade out of the juice.
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Those look really good.
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I think Salustiana (a Spanish orange not grown commercially in this country) is the finest orange I grow.
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I was actually debating planting a few more in between my other trees(since I plan to keep them more like a hedge anyway) so they’re easier to just protect as a group anyway. I’m in 8a though so not a tarp.
@Johnsgard Very impressive! I am looking into growing some sweet oranges in my yard and have not heard of Salustiana before. But I was able to finally grow a few Bergamots (I love Earl Grey Tea) this year. I had about 6 including a few very large ones, but they split this Fall.
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How’s the interior? I understand that it’s the peel you use but I’m curious what the orange itself tastes like. Super sour, any bitterness?
