The Tropical Fruit Forum
Citrus => Cold Hardy Citrus => Topic started by: Millet on February 13, 2018, 03:26:14 PM
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http://www.growingproduce.com/citrus/varieties-rootstocks/cold-weather-puts-new-northern-citrus-plantings-to-the-test/ (http://www.growingproduce.com/citrus/varieties-rootstocks/cold-weather-puts-new-northern-citrus-plantings-to-the-test/)
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Up in the Pacific Northwest it's been an unusually mild Winter this year. The forecast was that it would be particularly wet with lots of snow but it turned out to be unusually dry and unusually warm (relatively speaking). There was a light snow in early November, and later a fair amount of snow for just a stretch of four days in late February, but that was it. Not even any freezing temperatures the rest of the time in mid-Winter. One of my rose bushes had a few blooms on it on New Years Day, and there were also several camellia bushes with blooms on it. This definitely isn't typical. If every Winter was like this I'm sure you could grow a Satsuma outside, no problem.
Meanwhile I know you guys on the East coast were hammered by unusually freezing cold temperatures this year.
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Here on the 8b / 9a line in Louisiana we had one of the coldest winters in my lifetime, at least when talking about absolute low temperatures, where we hit 14F two night in a row (Our all time record low here is 13F set back in the 1940's). I covered all my 8 citrus trees ranging from second year in ground 4 ft to 15 ft tall x 20 ft wide 25 year old Satsumas, and provided heat with incandescent C7 Christmas lights or heat lamps. Even with this all suffered some damage to limb tips, and one of my smaller Satsumas was killed back to about 6 inches above the graft line, time will tell how well it will recover, but it is growing fast, and now has a new 6-8 inch tall shoot with 30-40 leaves, which is much better than the 3 leaves it was down to in early February.
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Where I am I'm not counting on ordinary citrus varieties. The Satsuma is inside a cold frame, which basically tells you I don't really regard it as a cold hardy variety (relatively speaking, compared to the others varieties I have). Well it is 47°N latitude so what would you expect?
Satsuma is a lot hardier than than other varieties but up here even it would be pretty "iffy", without protection.
Obviously the much cold hardier varieties are not good enough eating quality to have value for commercial production (compared to the type of varieties you find in supermarkets).
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I think whatever you find in supermarkets is not worth cultivating. The most sought after Citrus in Europe is Yuzu and Fingerlime also Cedro and Buddha's Hand ;)