The Tropical Fruit Forum

Two quality issues I sometimes see on my fresh picked citrus fruit are:

Puffiness/drying - the flesh lacks juice and is like a dry sponge with little flavor.  It is still soft.  Typically the whole fruit is affected.  The peel tends to come right off as it doesn't adhere well to the flesh.
"Granulation" - Hard crunchy areas exist on an otherwise good quality fruit.  Often near one end.  The crunchy areas are not gritty like sand, more like breakfast cereal pieces.  The rest of the fruit is usually juicy and nice. 

I'm not sure if I am referring to the symptoms correctly, after reading these terms it was my best interpretation.

I was just at a large asian grocery store over the weekend and didn't see any of these.  Will have to keep checking, I'd like to buy them again.

I'm pretty sure my single runty seed actually sprouted from the last batch.  It doesn't look very healthy, though, until I see leaves I can't be 100% sure it is the seed I planted and not some random one that made it into the soil.

brian, at which temps did your shiranui ripen in your greenhouse?
I'm asking because my miyagawa which is ripening under cold temps doesn't get much sweetness
thanks!

My greenhouse minimum temperature is 55F / 13C.   When the sun is shining with no clouds it gets up to 90F / 33C, but only for up to 6hrs or so because the days are short in winter here.

My dekopan/shiranui/sumo tree continues to be fantastic.  Good crop sizes, always 100% seedless, excellent fruit every year, easy peeling.  I think I have 4 this many fruit left on the 7ft tree in my greenhouse.  This year's crop of fruits are a little smaller than last year, I had gotten some gigantic ones, taste is same as always.

I started picking them occasionally, but I think they need more time to ripen on the tree as they are still slightly sour.  While I like acidity in citrus, this crop is not yet sweet enough to balance it out.  Still very tasty, though, I'm being picky at this point because I have a whole tree full of Dekopan to eat.

The fruits in this crop are very large and flat, with the fruits packed tightly together in clusters.  They are very easy to peel, though the rind breaks a bit so maybe not 100% zipper peel.  Peel has a very nice smell though not as nice as Dekopan.  The membrane between segments is slightly tougher than Dekopan and when you bite into the segments juice tends to shoot out.  No issues with granulation or puffiness so far.  Zero seeds as always. 

I'll report back again after I give them more time to ripen.  Right now they are very good but I'm less impressed than my first good crop.  Last season I bought a new Owari, as that was my previous favorite homegrown mandarin but my tree had died.  If the Shasta Gold fails to be consistently great I might replace it with the Owari at some point. 

Grapefruit!

Nordmann seedless nagami kumquat

Lisbon and Eureka are the grocery store lemons and are both very good and widely available in nurseries.   You can probably find them locally.  Buying $40 tree locally and cutting scion from that seems like a good approach to me.

I'm not sure when a good time to graft in CA is.

I definitely want some.  K-Rimes sent me some CA cherimoyas earlier this year and they were amazing, the grocery store ones are crap in comparison.

Sending PM

Last week I noticed that my variegated pink eureka had also dropped a bunch of healthy leaves, maybe 25% of the canopy.  The tree seems fine, I'm not worried about it, but I guess it isn't so rare.

This tree is in a container hanging from the roof of my greenhouse, and gets full sun when the sun is out. 

I had a PPC (Phet Pac Chung) that performed well in a 25‑gallon pot. I suspect both the tree and the fruit would have grown larger if it had been planted in the ground; ...

I do notice that my atemoya-in-a-container produces fruits much smaller than the typical atemoya fruits I see pictures of.  It has only been fruiting for a couple years, though, and it produces more and slightly larger fruit each yet.

I got a few fruits from my flying-dragon rootstock minneola this week.  They are still watery, though the flavor seems better than before.  I will keep the tree a while long and see if it improves.  For now I will keep it in a container at a small size.

Huh, I'll have to try crushing the leaves to check for apple smell.  I eat a lot of apples of all different kinds and I have a pretty keen sense of smell, I think I'd notice it.

EDIT - I did, and the leaves do smell like apple

Interesting!   Yours is a bright red color, while mine got deep purple.  Mine did not taste anything like apple. 

Maybe they are highly variable and I got bad luck.