The Tropical Fruit Forum

SC 400, are you spraying the tree with something to keep the mites from messing up all your fruit? If so, what do you use? Neem oil? Horticultural oil?

I assume it’s not very cold hardy but I don’t like having big potted trees in my house 8 months out of the year, so I decided to take a chance and put it in a portable greenhouse last winter and treated it like my other hardy citrus that are in ground using two water barrels and two small 250 watt space heaters regulated by thermo cube, and it did fine even overwintered this fruit without damage. However, it was a very warm winter I think only getting to 14 degrees F in mid March. If I am supposed to go to single digits I will probably freak out and dolly cart it into the living room.

I got my Ichang lemon grafted on flying dragon from McKenzie Farms in SC.

“We” shouldn’t have citrus mites in western North Carolina either, but although I am the only person I know of with in ground citrus in western NC, I guess the mite could have been introduced by a tree that I brought in from elsewhere. But none of my other trees have it either. I assumed it could have been frost damage since most of my poncirus blooms froze off this spring. I didn’t think I was going to have any poncirus fruit at all since my poncirus go unprotected in winter.

Ichang lemon. I like my Lakeland limequat. It made it through winter in a pot inside a portable greenhouse last year with little space heater same as my other citrus.

If you look toward the bottom left side of the enclosure you’ll see the small white 250 watt space heater regulated by a thermo cube.

I juice the fruit and use it to make lemon pie. I need to try to make lemon curd or some other lemon recipe.

I cut open my first Santa Teresa fruit today. It was very good. Put some juice in my tea. Maybe one day I’ll have enough for lemon curd or a pie.

I picked up this weird poncirus and two small flying dragon fruit today, and a big bucket of regular shaped poncirus.

I’ve had seedlings start variegated but all eventually go green.

Here’s my St Anne on poncirus. In cold frame that I do for all my non-hybrids. Got it from Simply Citrus in SC several years ago. Just started growing this summer after a crabapple tree fell that was next to it and blocking sun. I’ve been cutting immature fruit off to get tree to grow more. I do small space heaters and water barrels to keep them alive in winter. My satsuma trees and grapefruit have done well with this method even through a month below freezing and lows of zero or below from sundown to sun up.

I just put mine near a south or west facing window. The problem with citrus indoors is spider mites. I spray them with neem oil solution or haul them outside once a week if not freezing and blast the underside of leaves with hose. I have also put them in the shower to let it rain on them. Mites don’t like water or humidity. It helps to put a humidifier near your plants too. My in ground citrus in cold frames get water hosed once a week also when not freezing outside. They do better outside in cold frames I think because they get the natural humidity. Once my frames are set up, my maintenance on the cold frame citrus is easier/ less work than the potted ones in the house. Despite my efforts last year, I still had one potted indoor lemon tree defoliate from mites and didn’t recover until put back outside in spring.

I think Swingle citrumelo is a decent lemon. I’ve made lemon pie with it. I drink poncirus lemonade. I just boil the juice and siphon off the bitter oil after it settles out in a jar in fridge overnight. Then freeze the juice in one cup freezer containers. I mix one cup of processed poncirus juice to a full size orange juice decanter and add nine truvia packets and stir. I have an orange juice glass of this lemonade every morning with breakfast.