The Tropical Fruit Forum

A friend has a mature marsh white grapefruit that tests 17 brix in Houston,TX. 17 brix is sweeter than
most round oranges. Sweetest grapefruit I have ever eaten. I have eaten the fruit for several years and it is amazingly sweet. Ate several 5 gallon buckets last year. His tree was loaded last year but is looking on it's last leg this year, probably
wet feet. We had a very wet spring. My friend hasn't fertilized regularly and the tree has very little budwood.
Have tried two years in a row to propagate with no luck due to questionable budwood in the fall. I picked some decent
looking bud wood a week ago, nice and green and have t budded several rootstocks
and bark grafted to my mature seedling. I have my fingers crossed. I usually don't bud in the heat of summer like the 95+F weather we have been having. Budwood was only max 4 inches and was hardened off current flush. In my experience a tree has to be growing
vigorously to have abundant and high quality bud wood.

Hope the grafts take and fruit quality is so sweet. I grafted a super sweet satsuma
years ago with poor luck. The young trees didn't have the same high quality fruit.
Sometimes size of tree or location are the cause of exceptional fruit quality in citrus.

Anyone out there growing this one?

Hope no one gets hit this bad in Florida. Used to live at 4 foot elevation on Merritt Island nearly 50 years ago.

Well fellas, hello from flooded last week Sugar Land,Texas. Being at 75 feet elevation didn't help with river flooding. The river in the pictures is the Brazos. The neighborhood Riverstone was one of the top selling new home neighborhoods in the country last year. My neighborhood is Sienna Plantation, I am on the dry side and not flooded. However a tornado hit and took the roof off 50 houses a few miles away. For some youtube videos google "Sienna Plantation flooding" or tornado. BTW the storm was only a tropical depression when it hit but overstayed it's welcome by 4 days dumping 3-5 FEET of water on us. I left the 36 and 49 Ford woodies up on my bendpak lifts, the 63 verte got left on the ground. Not  a drop of water even in the street in front of my house. I evacuated to 125 miles away but had to drive 400 miles to get there. Left Monday and returned Saturday with the Interstate 10 still closed. They expected the levees to be topped but happily they were not with the Brazos river cresting at 55 feet instead of 59 feet. You Florida guys have my sympathy. Think many of the beach houses on a slab which are the overwhelming majority will get flooded and washed away on both coasts.  Happy for us we have a cold front keeping Irma away from Houston but unhappily for you in Florida.

I am on the dry side of Steep Bank Creek:


Triangle is the flooded area:


This is what hundreds of front yards look like:


Here is what the almosts look like for many $million+ homes on the lake, BTW not my street, the lake on the above picture:

I sampled one of my in ground xie shan satsumas the other day when I squeezed one and it was soft and already starting to get sweet.
They are already somewhat orange inside, green on the outside. I think one of the reasons they taste so good in my area is they are
so early. They are earlier than any other satsuma I have eaten. Last year a xie shan on my friend's tree was excellent
November 1 when most other satsumas were not ready. However, if you let brand x satsuma hang on the tree until January first
they are IMHO equal to xie sha at least in my area.

Quarantine area is about 5 miles from me. I wonder how many were sold? 

Richmond, Fort Bend County.
Citrus nursery trees at a retail nursery in Richmond, Fort Bend County, Texas, were routinely inspected by TDA on July 28, 2016. Some of the trees were found to be symptomatic for citrus canker; whereupon, TDA collected samples, placed the trees under seizure, and rushed the samples to USDA for identification. USDA immediately screened then sent the samples off for laboratory confirmation, which confirmed the trees were infected with citrus canker. TDA inspection determined that most of the approximately 300 citrus nursery trees at the retail nursery were infected with citrus canker. With the nursery’s consent, TDA destroyed all the symptomatic and the suspect citrus nursery trees and disposed of them according to sanitation procedures, to prevent accidental spread of the disease. USDA began survey work to identify all infected plants in the area and to determine how far the infestation extended in all directions. On August 10, 2016 TDA established the Richmond Citrus Canker Quarantined Area, in collaboration with USDA-APHIS-PPQ. Inspection of plants, their labels and nursery purchase records, disclosed that the nursery’s multiple varieties of infected citrus trees were from four propagative nurseries in Texas. All nurseries that had sold citrus plants to the retail nursery were thoroughly inspected and found to be free of citrus canker. The citrus nursery plants must have become infected after they had arrived at the retail nursery in Richmond. Currently there are no commercial producers of citrus fruit and no producers or retailers of citrus nursery trees inside the quarantined area. Only dooryard (ornamental/personal use) citrus trees are found inside the quarantined area. To combat the infestation, as soon as USDA locates a citrus canker infected tree, TDA inspectors seek homeowner cooperation, then destroy and sanitarily dispose of the tree. All varieties of citrus and other quarantined articles inside the quarantined area are subject to the quarantine restrictions and requirements." 

Houston, Harris County.
Two adjacent sour orange trees in a city park in Houston, Harris County, Texas, were sampled on May 13, 2016, and confirmed by USDA to be infected by citrus canker. Both trees were destroyed and a delimiting survey of potential hosts has found no further infected plants. The department has quarantined the area that contained the infected plants. All varieties of citrus and other quarantined articles inside the quarantined area are subject to the quarantine restrictions and requirements.

Millet you ought to consider moving the group
to Facebook. It is much easier to post pictures.

Here is one I look at:

TX Rare Fruit Growers
https://www.facebook.com/groups/TXRFG/

These were grown by a friend in Matagarda, TX along the coast between near Victoria,TX. Tree is one of three seedlings golden grapefruit planted in 1989
after the 10F freeze when no nursery stock was available. No such freeze since then. Fruit is white grapefruit.

Picked a couple dozen at a friend's house in Spring Branch, TX. They hold really well on the tree. I had already eaten
the fruit on my mature tree in Beaumont by now. The taste is very sweet but not much like a grapefruit.
Fruit are really sweet before Thanksgiving. Grapefruit sized fruit however. One of my top three.

Here is atlas honey mandarin. Got them from Bill Arendt. Supposed to be a seedless ponkan. I thought ponkan was a large mandarin? These are satsuma size or smaller. Very tasty but somewhat over the hill as they are excessively sweet. Must be an early mandarin and today is rather late. I got a few dozen to really get the taste of them. Bill also lassoed me into being a volunteer at the upcoming UrbanHarvest fruit tree sale Jan 17. I'll have to say the sale I went to 10 or more years ago at a dilapidated former public school in a near downtown Houston neighborhood was quite crowded and high energy with long lines shoving and pulling and quick sellouts. Apparently they have gotten more so and much larger. This one will be at Rice U.