The Tropical Fruit Forum

Much lower! Remove the bark mulch around the trunk and cut as low as you possibly can. You could do a first cut where you indicate to get rid of the bulk and so any tear-out happens up there. Then go back and cut carefully as low as possible. The higher you cut the uglier it will look and the more you will fight sprouts. If you cut real low, don't cover the cut surface with soil or mulch so it can dry & heal. Buy a good pruning saw (e.g. one of those fold-out pull saws) with razor sharp edges, then you don't need to apply much force and can control the cut easily.

From the new photo it's pretty obvious where the graft is on the trunk with the black tape: that's where the trunk narrows and makes a bit of an S shape. Be careful not to damage the bark on the trunk you are keeping when you saw off the others! Also, I would assume that you will get a slew of suckers sprouting where you cut, so be vigilant in the coming years and remove them promptly.

So there are two trunks to this tree, right? If you're lucky, one is a sucker on the rootstock with the trifoliate leaf and the other is the original grafted fruit. If you're unlucky it's like achetadomestica said and both are rootstock. You said you had some branches with trifoliate and some with single leaves but you didn't say which trunk they're on.

I'm a bit curious about the use of turface, doesn't it retain too much moisture? As far as I can tell, it's about equivalent to vermiculite and retains more than perlite or pumice.

Haha, I edited my post at the same time as you posted  Addictive search! But yeah, "it's a mess"...

Edit: looks like the Corsican Citron is the closest match in the UCR Citrus Variety Collection...

Dumb question: what are you looking for? I use a knife and some parafilm...

Laaz, I thought I was satisfied with my citrus collection until I saw your post. Now I want those varieties also!

No kidding! What a way to scramble a CCPP order in the last minute!

Very interesting! I had no idea that white stuff would be useful for something (other than some in marmalade).
Any thoughts about varieties available in the US that could be used?

As I'm sitting here choosing budwood from the CCPP I'm back to my perennial question: is there any citrus that can give me fruit later than about June and before the Satsumas in Nov-Dec? I'm in semi-coastal CA (10mi from the ocean at 2100', so more daytime heat but also colder at night and in winter). The only variety I know of is a Valencia Orange and sadly the most mature tree I have is one of those damn Midknight Valencias (seems to be the only variety available in nurseries), which grows incredibly slowly. All the other trees of the same generation are big and full of fruit and that Midknight is just behind... I have a Minneola Tangelo, which sweetens pretty late and hangs well on the tree for a long time, but I can't quite picture it past June (so far not enough fruit to try).
I'm wondering, has nobody tried crossing Valencia with something else to get late fruit, or is that not possible?

Laaz, what is the end cost of a cu ft of your mix? I've been getting the E.B.Stone Citrus&Palm planting mix, which works very well but is heavy due to a good amount of sand. It ends up around $6/cuft.

Thanks for posting, quite interesting! Is that Turface MVP similar to Vermiculite?

I managed to get a Lamb Hass at a local nursery a couple of weeks ago. I wish I could have gotten a smaller tree, but stock is non-existent in the area... I have two questions:
- I want to keep this tree topped at 7-8 feet following a bit the UC research trial about high-density planting. I probably need to provide some frost cover in winter and this height makes that plausible. The plant is about 5' now (above the container), is it best to wait 'til it exceeds 7' and then pinch back or start now cutting it in half?
- I'm suspicious about the soil it's in, it will go into very sandy soil when planted in a few months (space not ready yet), so I'm wondering about repotting into a very sandy mix. But given that it's just in a growth flush maybe I should wait 'til it's done with that?

Interesting, I'm curious to see your experience. I'm in the Santa Barbara mountains at 2100'. Low this past winter was 29F-30F. I have a young/small Goldfinger in the ground and it looked pretty bad. It was a young plant, just 2' tall, and almost everything turned to mush. One sucker made it and the second largest pstem. The largest pstem didn't. The plant is on a slope, so not a cold air drain, but it's not anywhere near buildings or asphalt. It is in front of a huge south facing boulder, but we had cold & wet weather when we hit the low temps, so virtually no solar gain during the day. (Interestingly, our lows are typically a tad higher than much further down the mountain and in the foothills because cold air drains up here.)