The Tropical Fruit Forum

Interesting, I heard miracle berry was really cold sensitive.

Any of these with a standout zest? I have bergamot and am looking for others to experiment with making teas.

Depends on what you're looking for, but I've found that meyer lemon and honeybell/minnoela tangelo have nice perfumey rind scend.

Thank you!   

I use weatherunderground.com.  I assume they have an app too.


Over a foot of snow up here today

I was at the asian grocery today looking for those Crispy Honey Kumquats.  They had none, but they did have individually packaged "Jelly Orange" fruits for $2/piece.  I looked the name up and found references to "Ehime Jelly Orange" or "Ehime no. 38 Jelly Orange", which seems to be a "style" of Mikan cultivar mandarin

"Mikan, or unshiu mikan, is a type of mandarin orange that is popular in Japan, known for its easy-to-peel skin and sweet flavor. It is primarily grown in the Ehime and Wakayama prefectures and is enjoyed especially during the winter months for its high vitamin C content."

But the ones I bought say they are from China, so they could be something completely different.

Anyway, they taste like improved navel oranges.  They have the same mild navel orange taste (I was never a big fan of navel oranges) but they are considerably sweeter and have very thin skin and no actual navel.  For $2 a fruit they aren't outrageously expensive for a premium fruit, and they are nice to eat.  But I prefer the sweet/sour taste of mandarins.

Picked another cluster today.  They are still a bit more tart than I prefer.  Really easy to peel now.  Still very juicy and messy.  Still a lot more of them on the tree I will leave for a while, and pick one every week or two over the winter. 

My campomanesia reitziana is having a large bloom right now.  It smells similar to hyacinth, but not as strong.  I finger-pollinated a bunch of the flowers, hoping it will actually set some fruit this time after a small bloom last year (followed by severe die-back). 

It has been growing really vigorously despite the winter sun, and sucks up a lot of water.  It is in a ~5gal container now, but if it were planted in the ground I think it would be huge already.

Nice!

Once they become very slightly soft I pick them.  Sometimes they fall off, but they are fine if you catch them within a day or two.   At least for my short tree

They also turn a slightly yellower shade of green when they are ripe

Abiu

Is abiu actually chewy or just gelatinous?  I haven't tried it yet, but from photos I got the impression it was more gooey than lychee-like

Rollinia is really gooey/jelly-like, which I hate.  If it had lychee texture it would be one of my favorite fruits!

No idea, I got rid of the pink wampee long ago and am growing yellow ones now. 

One of my curry leaf plants (bergera/murraya koenigii) made fruit for the first time this year.  Very small black berries, but the taste and texture is the same as the pink wampee.  I am surprised they are in different genus of Rutacae family, the plants are extremely similar in appearance, growth habit, taste, and smell

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.