The Tropical Fruit Forum

I think its great that you found a finger lime in Colorado!  Now you have two, congratulations! Its always fun to find those kind of things.

Great clip! Now if we could get a quantity of the essential oil like that, we could use it for so many things!

I wonder how it will affect lemon growers.  Many citrus growers in California are already struggling with the low prices and in our area many orange groves have been left to die, partly its cost of water, but its the metrics of paying all of the costs and getting a high enough price to return even a small profit.

I agree with Sylvain, it is an issue for trade if there isn't a give and take.  Though some crops, like avocados, can also bring in pests, like thrips, which do scar the fruit.  We didn't have those ( I'm told by old time farmers) before fruit came in from certain countries that are not as careful as California has become.

We have a few trees and we love the fruit, I agree, the sweetest I have tasted.  They are very small, and tend to be soft and fragile. It might be those two things that make them difficult to manage for the commercial market.   Consumers will have to be educated about the superior taste.

Similar thing happened to one of my outside navel orange trees.  We were away for a week and a half and when we returned it had dropped a lot of leaves.   Weird, because there was a huge rainstorm, about three inches so we did not water, I could not believe how the tree went from beautiful and lush looking to dried out branches with leaf drop so fast.  (Maybe too much water?) We were selling the house so I don't know what its doing now, but it kind of scared me, that there was some disease factor going on. a grapefruit nearby also had some leaf drop, but not as severe. You might be right Millet about the bloom time effect but this tree has never done this before.

Appreciate the clarification about the word "tangerine".  So we should not use it?  I want to be accurate when I describe fruit varieties.

Galka, that is an interesting story about the one odd fruit on your tree, keep us posted, it sounds like you have a new variety.  I've read that citrus tends to be influenced by other citrus.  Those growing near each other can develop traits of other types. Maybe at the nursery your tree was growing near something that influenced its development. There is a variety called "Honey Sweet" that someone was offering for sale.

Thanks for sharing your experience! Highlights how patient gardeners are!  Glad to hear your grapefruit is doing well.

Hi, from Hass avocado territory in southern California.  We had quite a problem with the weather being hot ( 110-115 F)( 40-46C) last year during the summer. That was way too hot for them.  The trees all got scorched and some of them had severe burns to leaves and branch tissue.  That takes time to recover from.  California is also dealing with the smallest crop in their history due to a warm, dry spell when the flowers should have been pollinating each other.  So we are watching the trees recover and it might take a year or more.  A small tree may take up to 8 years to bear fruit if its from a seed.  Our Hass trees are all rootstock of one variety with a grafted top of the Hass variety.   If you have one flower, give it more time, your leaves look great, so the tree is growing. The soil is very important, and the tree will do best if it has room for the small roots in the top 8 inches to 11/2 feet of soil can freely soak up nutrients, that means lots of leaf litter and mulch. Now, to get fruit, you need lots of flowers, and if you have a "B" cultivar  ( Fuerte, Ettinger, Zutano, are examples) than you will have more of a chance to have fruit.  Avocado flowers open up for a short time as female, then close and open up as male. Hass is an "A" variety. if you get the "B" variety, their flowers will be male when the Hass flowers are female. That's more opportunity for pollination. When you have flowers, don't let the air around the tree dry out too much, that will give the pollen the moisture it needs to "stick". I wish you well, but as Mike T says, the variety may not do well in your area.  Keep trying for what you want though, because your picture shows a healthy young tree so you are doing a good job so far.  If you can shade them during heat spells it might work.

I have several Yuzu trees. I am growing them for Farmers Markets.  They take time to establish, mine looked awful at first, dropped all of their leaves and then grew a new set and took off.  They are growing where other citrus doesn't do well, in a low lying area, that's a "cold sink".  They also can tolerate poor soil.  I like them squeezed in water they way you would a lemon. They are great in "mocktails" ( non alcoholic mixed drinks).  They add a nice zing to stir frys, and both the peel and juice is nice added to pastry dough and filling.  I am looking forward to having enough to distill for the essential oil this year. The oil can be an ingredient in fragrances and a flavoring. They are not for everyone, but I see a market for them, and fresh yuzu juice has to beat that tin I saw in the market the other day!

Thanks for this article, really nice to hear about the young farmer taking a grapefruit and squeezing it on his grandfather's grave, that's real dedication and respect to his roots.   We used to eat white grapefruit growing up, everyone put sugar on it, and I didn't like the sugar part. Farmers are telling me that people here in So Cal are asking for white grapefruit at Farmers Markets.