With roughly 15 years of growing citrus, I have stop collecting anything citrus many years ago. Having pretty much all y need or care to grow. Way too many issues sending out sionwood. Besides many trees has lost its tags, sending out sionwood, is an other issue to know who to send it too. I had one issue one person wants sionwood to a legal address than send sionwood to a different address. No more citrus sionwood.
Happy with what I have.
I know with citrus trees there are restrictions with certain states to send citrus which can make things hard. I also know with sending citrus there is a very narrow window where I live. Too hot it burns up in the package and too cold and it dies. I bought a mandarin from someone who was supposedly an old forum member in citrus forums and they sent it in December or January. It came frozen. I have also just learned citrus is very temperamental and slow growing where I live. I don’t have a south facing window so I used a 5k grow light. I grew Gold Nugget, Cara Cara and Owari Satsuma. Outside without protection during summer they would often get munched on and in winter even with a 5k grow light over it which worked wonders for my peppers did not do it for my citrus. My citrus would lose lots of leaves and just not be happy inside. I heard a YouTube video where the person claimed sweet citrus would not sweeten inside so I canned the endeavor. When I pulled my citrus I found it has put out very few roots. There was a twig of a root poking out after a year of growing. Compare that to my fig where I replanted it after a week or 2 and it had already sunk many roots into the soil and grew quite a bit deeper than I planted it. Besides at least where I live citrus is cheap and the only citrus I eat is Cara Cara and mandarins. Those are the issues I encountered when growing citrus but some of those situations are unique to me as I don’t have a south facing window and trying to grow it out of zone.
That does look like ‘Santa Teresa’, although they are not the only lemons that can look like that, They do vary some in shape from fruit to fruit. ‘Santa Teresa’ has some of the best lemon oil in the world ‘in its peel’, that is one way to tell if you are not growing any other exceptional oil containing lemon varieties. Another way to tell if a lemon is ‘Santa Teresa’ is some of the lemons of that variety when ripe have a bulging looking skin, then again not the only high end variety that does that.
I only grow Santa Teresa and Meyer lemons, I like Santa for my uses, my wife and her friends like the Meyer being more sweeter and milder. Don’t need need more varieties. I got my sionwood from a very reliable source. Happy!
I have a habit drinking a glass of water with any kind of lemon juice with a t spoon of top quality honey, every morning. It doesn’t matter what lemon. Meyer will do for that.
We love making Cherries Jubilee, for that it has to be with S/T.
We were on vacation in New Orleans and had dinner at Antoine, for dessert? Cherries Jubilee, but back in Chicago we had dinner there, Isabell, had Cherries Jubilee for dessert at table side, way better. Waiter Calvin gave me his recipe, that’s over 30 years ago, still uses!
On a more serious note, if you have a citrus orchard with just a small variety it’s more symplier to deal with understanding the different growing cycles.
Way to many varieties it could become a nightmare.
Blooming at different times, feeding at different times etc. Might have a dozen or more, it could become a chore, a total 30 some trees.
You’re right, I have a couple dozen varieties in containers (in greenhouse). Too hard to keep up. So far the satsumas, mandarins, limes and lemons have produced best. The true oranges and grapefruit types do the worst. I think it’s because Feb is often our coldest winter period and it’s too difficult to keep them above 50 deg. Both of my blood oranges act like they want to die - lost half the branches early summer and again in early winter.
The only thing left to do for me is making smaller size trees but more precocious. This is more complicated, timing of fertilizers is important, so is watering too much, flower dropping,not enough, no good either (fruit drop).
My greenhouse citrus were very happy with nights in the 30s and low 40s from Nov thru Febr. Days 40s to 80s. High light and often low humidity. Both potted and inground did great. These temperatures are very similar to those in the citrus belt in CA. Citrus there doesn’t lose leaves in winter and the fruit is sweet.
Fruitnut, you have better conditions than me. My Greenroom has house temps, 70* all day, 4’ led lights, my trees never experience temps below 36* just in the fall before I bring them in. Knowing you, you probably have great yields from your trees, same as MrTexas. Last week I turn another year, eight/four, time to slow down, had my fun.
My operation has been on the cheap side,uppotting, fertilizers? Multi year supply, nothing else, rainwater? Plenty, 69*.
When I got the ‘Improved Meyer Lemon’ 9 1/2 years ago I knew almost nothing about Lemons/citrus, I just had seen how famous it was, and I read that it was disease resistant, it was my first citrus, not just my first Lemon. Now I can make way better choices about citrus. I’d imagine that the more citrus trees you have the more important it is to time the crops to be at different times. I will never get as many citrus trees as you have unless I get to carried away hybridizing citrus, I already know the one kind of Mandarin I like by understanding what we buy at the store, I have written down the best varieties of lemon, I can get enough of which to more than satisfy me. There are some types of citrus I know I don’t like. I am not the kind of person that likes all citrus, so I will not get all types of citrus under the sun. How big did your collection get?
The nursery closeby has several greenhouses, in one of them he grows a large citrus tree,pretty old. He built a homemade fireplace, very basic but seems to work pretty good. He put in a good size log, keep temp low, log still burn in the morning. That tree is always loaded. Greenhouse is about 12x24x8 high. He might be using white oak(last longer).
Alan, about 34 tree’s and that many figtrees in containers, a dozen or more inground figs.
