What is your favorite tasting mandarin?

[BonsaiBeast]

What mandarin is the most flavorful/interesting mandarin you have tried?

I just got to try a Kinnow and wow is it tasty. Maybe the best flavor of any mandarin.

If only it was seedless...

[Millet]

Easy question to answer.   Xie Shan

[AndrewAZ]

Brown's select

[brettay]

I have been eating Page Tangelos for about 2-3 months and they are divine.  Everyone who has tasted them is a big fan.  They are a great mix of sweetness, rich mandarin flavor and lively acidity.  They are not the easiest to peel and they are not entirely seedless, but the flavor more than makes up for that.

I have not had Xie Shan, but in general I find satsumas a little lacking in acidity and balance.  These answers are obviously highly influenced by the different characteristics that each of us prefer in our fruit.

-Brett

[fyliu]

Kinnow, sweet? It tastes really acidic to me. It does have some HLB resistance.

I don't have Xie Shan and Shiranui fruiting yet, so Gold nugget for me.

[Millet]

Another great fruit is Ponkan.  Ponkan is one of the largest mandarins, very easy pealing, a great balance between sugar and acid.  Its one draw back is that it is seedy.

[Tom]

Xie Shan was the best I’ve had in several taste tests in central Alabama. Also in central Alabama, several years ago I had some Brown Select Satsumas right off the tree and they were really unbelievable !!! I believe the same tree won best in show many years ago at a SE citrus expo. It was grown and entered by John Henderson. A year ago, maybe longer the same tree had very ordinary tasting fruit. Too much fertilizer or too little fertilizer or too much rain at one time.....who knows ! I’m sure it will have excellent fruit again !

All that to say what taste the best in central Alabama is not necessarily what would taste the same somewhere else. Cool nights and warm days are suppose to help the flavor and warm nights hurt the flavor in warmer locales.

Tom

[Darkman]

So far in my Pensacola plantings with trees planted in 2012 I rank them Kimbrough then Owari. I have Ponkon, Xie Shan and Shiranui that I have not harvested good fruit off of yet.

Best overall citrus was Hamlin followed closely by Orlando. I lost Hamlin and Orlando in 2014, replanted and lost them again in 2017. May replace with Tango and/or Sugarbelle. Had Cara Cara and liked it but it too was lost in 2014. I have a small replacement growing now.

I have a Parson Brown orange that is ok for juicing.

[mrtexas]

Don't you bank your trees with dirt for freeze protection?

[Tom]

Mrtexas, I can jump in and say I remember Darkman was probably going to lose at least one of his favorite citrus trees to Ambrosa beetles. It was an older tree not a small nursery tree as I remember. He didn’t know how he got it or why he got it but it was bad as best I remember. I was afraid it was terminal. Cold or not banking soil didn’t kill all those trees. He is probably hotter than me in summer but he does get down in the low teens some winters. I’m sure he knows about banking the soil around the trunk. He had a lot going on and hadn’t quite retired. He had lots of citrus and was working really hard on them and lots of other fruit too. I think he hard a heart attack or had a close call and then I lost all contact. I’m glad he’s back !

Tom

[Millet]

Darkman, it is GREAT seeing you on the forum again.  I looked for you at the Savannah citrus expo, and asked Hershell Boyd about you.  Really glad to see you here.

[containerman]

My top 2 favorites that I'm growing are the Okistu Wase Satsuma and the Gold Nugget. The others I'm growing are really good the Yosemite Gold, Tahoe Gold and Kishu but the Okistu and G.N. are really tasty mandarins.

[Darkman]

Don't you bank your trees with dirt for freeze protection?

I had soil banked in previous years but felt that the trees were big enough that I didn't need to and I was not counting on lows of 18, an ice storm and sub freezing temperatures for nearly 46 hours. That was an unusual extreme combination that probably will never happen again. this year I was expecting a low of 23 but it dipped to 19. If I had used my spray I would not have lost any trees. As it is this year I think I'm only going to have one tree completely killed. I'll probably use this opportunity to cull a few trees and add some newer varieties. I'm looking at Tango, EV1 and Sugar Belle.

Tom was right I had a heart attack in May 2014 followed by a quadruple bypass. I finally retired from law enforcement July 14th, 2017 but I still maintain a reserve status and work about twenty hours a week. Maybe later this year I'll give it all up.

Hi Millet I hope to attend this years expo. Do we know where it will be? I hope ill be able to participate some now.

A bit of Bad News. HLB has arrived near me. There are five confirmed cases within 80 miles and one within 20 miles.

[Millet]

Next year's citrus expo is in Valdosta GA.

[Farmerche]

Browns Select, Soo good! My Xie Shan is similar age and size and has been disappointing so far