The Tropical Fruit Forum

Yuzu is in season right now, if that qualifies. Plenty of websites are selling it at the moment

Thanks for the info. @deRoode, did you also take cuttings during hot months?

I used cuttings coming from plants actively growing at 23 °C to 29°C. Material that was semi hardened worked best for me.

Have you tried to root FD cuttings? If so, was it easy?

I have rooted FD with quite a high succes rate. I used substrate plugs (some kind of cocos type plug). You can root them in a plastic container under LED at 23°C constant. First time it took around 6-8 weeks for most of them to root, significantly longer than other varieties. Using material from actively growing plants gave much better succes rates.

For those who are interested, I was to be able to visit Japan last December. During the trip I was lucky to find many different Japanese citrus.

Yuzu harvest season had just ended. You could find yuzu at any major grocery store, and often Kabosu and Sudachi as well.


Premium yuzu at 3€ each



Kabosu grown in Tokyo. The owner, an old coffee lady, insisted that the flowers attract many swallowtail butterflies each year.



In Tokyo I found many antenna shops. These shops represent a single prefecture. A great spot to find many different citrus-related products and fresh fruits including Jabara citrus from Wakayama, Yuzu from Koichi, Kabosu from Oita, Shikuwasa from Okinawa and Sudachi, Yukou and Awa Suzuka from Tokushima. Awa Suzuka is apparently a hybrid between Sudachi and Yuzu. It was recently released and Tokushima is currently trying to promote the citrus. I found some more information here: https://4citrus.com/english/ . It was quite an impressive fruit.




Dekopons were promoted a lot! Very high quality and tasty fruit, but often priced at at least 6€ per fruit, often double of that. I did look like there were different varieties of dekopons, since the I saw different sizes and colorations of the fruit. But this could be an other class of dekopon.



I visited the Koichi prefecture to look for some Yuzu farms. I mostly saw Citrus being grown in plastic tunnels. In the mountain region of Kochi, Yuzu was instead mostly grown unprotected. It was pretty impressive to see the scale on which yuzu was grown. Almost all of the yuzu I found was the very seedy kind. In fancier restaurants, I was sometimes met with seedless yuzu and sudachi. Unfortunately I have not found any seedless varieties in Europe. In Japan, it was simply available on Amazon.

I am fairly sure Dekopon is seedless. I tried some fruits in Japan, but I never found seeds.

Does anyone happen to have a protocol for properly germinating citrus seeds? I have inconsistent results. Usually the main problem is getting fungus on the seeds after peeling the seed coats. I have previously tried sterilization with bleach and/or disinfection in 40°C but that was not able to get rid of the fungus completely (or the growing substrate was not clean). Any help would be appreciated!

Are you using LED? Perhaps you are giving too much light.

Hi, I am germinating some yuzu seedlings, and some of them appear to be variegated. Does anyone have experience with this trait? Does it persist in the seedlings?

Thank you for sharing. This gives me a good idea of what to expect. How tall would you say a seedling would be on average to reach maturity?

Hi,

I have some trees (yuzu) that are reaching almost 2 meters. When could I expect them to become mature? Are there any signs that I can look for when they mature?
The main shoot appears exactly like the new growth I would expect from a grafted yuzu.

For the LEDs, it depends on what you want to achieve. Do you want to maintain the plants inside until spring? Then I would say you need minimal light. The risk with having a strong light source is that it might trigger flowering (if induction was done outside) or vegatative growth. If your tree can then not sustain that new growth, due to the climate not being optimal, it can kill your trees. I have unfortunately killed trees by moving them inside and letting them grow uncontrollably.

In regards to the deficiency symptoms; I would indeed start with measuring soil pH! An offset pH can interfere with nutrition uptake.

On a visit to Japan, ( outer Tokyo area ) I saw various Citrus trees in home gardens, and young trees at plant nurseries.
Specialty Citrus fruit was sometimes seen in supermarkets, i.e. unusual Japanese varieties.
I am wondering if there are any Citrus collectors / hobbyists in Japan ?
Any Citrus Forums in Japan ?
It is not hard to find webpages for Citrus farmers growing less common types,
but that is about as far as I have got.

Mature Flying Dragon tree/budwood
In my climate, ungrafted FD seedlings fruit in about 5 years. Also produce some interesting Off Types.
You can speed up their growth by extra heat, shortening the dormancy period.

Many varieties are also available on the Japanese amazon. Due to regulations regulations it's however not possible to import any material into the EU / Export from Japan. Nowadays fruits are being exported from Japan, and that is a way to get the varieties (my sudachi and yuzu are from Japan, and even found an importer selling haruka from Japan).

Interesting about the FD, I will have to try that