Shasta Gold Mandarin

[brian]

My Shasta Gold tree has a nice crop ripening now.  Dense clusters of large fruits. 

[Johnny Eat Fruit]

Yosemite Gold Mandarin is alternate bearing. 2024-2025 were poor harvests. Lots of variables including low rain and poor pollination. Hard to say what went wrong for those two years. 2026 looks good with solid fruit fruit set. Rain totals for 2025 so far look impressive thus far. All mandarins seem to alternative bear.

 Johnny


(Yosemite Gold Mandarin Tree on 11-5-2025)

[70Malibu]

Brian, your Shasta Gold fruits look big and nice. Let me know if it still is the best mandarin you have tasted when it ripens. Looking at your photos, the fruit skin appears to be soft and should peel easily. Can you tell me if it is easier to peel than the Gold Nugget or Murcott mandarin  with the tight smooth skin.

Johnny, my Gold Nugget seems to fruit regularly in my location.

[brian]

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. 

[70Malibu]

Thanks for the details, nice to hear the peel is easy to remove. I noticed the same acid taste now on the Yosemite Gold fruits, still needs another month for the acidity to lower. My Gold Nugget fruits are all starting to turn orange color, but I know it will not be real sweet until February. But the Satsuma trees I help maintenance (in-laws) already ripened on the trees The same 2 trees had about 1000 fruits this year, not as much as previous years since I cut the tree down from15ft to 8ft.I'm going over there to the tree and pick off most of the remaining fruits.

I just had a mini-taste test of some citrus with a group of 5 people yesterday, here's what we tasted:
- Satsuma
- Kishu
- Nules Clementine
- Oro Blanco
- Honey Pomelo
- Cocktail pomelo, from Dennis's tree
- Valentine pomelo
-  Cocktail pomelo, from mine tree
- Golden pomelo

The winner/best tasting was the Cocktail pomelo (my tree).

[brian]

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. 

[Johnny Eat Fruit]

I normally do not begin to pick my Yosemite Golds until late February as they are to acidic.  Peak flavor at my location is late March or so.

It is interesting though my YG did not begin to alternate bear until it was older than eight years.

Johnny

[SoCalGardenNut]

I just had my first Gold Nugget from my front yard, I didn’t think they are ripe yet, but I picked one to try, much better than Sumo. Much better than the Gold Nugget from my sister’s yard. Very nice flavor, and I have mine in a small container. It’s in full sun. The tree is loaded.

[70Malibu]

Yes, I like Gold Nugget, my tree is old (20+ yrs) and it is always loaded with fruits. I can give them away fast enough. But as Johnny says, the Yosemite Gold and Gold Nugget get sweeter in Feb-March. My fruits taste good now, but it does have some tartness which I like. In Feb (Valentine day) or March it won't have any tartness. Much better to me than Satsuma since the skin is harder so it last longer and doesn't mold much at all on the counter. The Satsuma gets mold in 3-5 days after you pick it unless you refrigerate it.

[SoCalGardenNut]

I’m glad I got 4 successful grafts last year of Gold Nugget. I don’t think they sell this citrus anymore, this is why I bought 2 more Satsumas. But one of my Satsuma fruit looks like a Gold Nugget, thick skin, not thin skin at all.

[70Malibu]

Just checked CCPP, all the Gold TDE series is available as well as Gold Nugget. One budstick is $15 plus $10 for Fed Ex delivery.

[SoCalGardenNut]

I’m now grafting all my existing citrus trees, especially the ones that haven’t fruit yet, to this Good Nugget.

[70Malibu]

You should also graft one branch with Yosemite Gold, I thought that was the best of the UCR TDE and Gold Nugget.

Last year when I attended a private citrus tasting for our CRFG, there was about 50 different citrus varieties to taste. Out of these, the top 2 variety that got a rating of 10/10 (a tie) was Miho-Wase satsuma and the Lee x Nova (Superna). You can buy both of these budwood from UCR/CCPP now.

I just ate a few Superna mandarin fruits from a friends tree and it was very good. The brix was not very high but taste was excellent. I will need to see what the Tango and Yosemite Gold brix reading was, just did it 2 days ago.

[jbirdfunk]

You should also graft one branch with Yosemite Gold, I thought that was the best of the UCR TDE and Gold Nugget.

Last year when I attended a private citrus tasting for our CRFG, there was about 50 different citrus varieties to taste. Out of these, the top 2 variety that got a rating of 10/10 (a tie) was Miho-Wase satsuma and the Lee x Nova (Superna). You can buy both of these budwood from UCR/CCPP now.

I just ate a few Superna mandarin fruits from a friends tree and it was very good. The brix was not very high but taste was excellent. I will need to see what the Tango and Yosemite Gold brix reading was, just did it 2 days ago.

I agree 88-2 (lee x nova) and Miho are on another level and don’t get enough attention. I’ve added grafts on various trees in the garden. TDE are great but Gold Nugget is still my all around fav.

[70Malibu]

Gold Nugget is a reliable fruit producer, and taste is pretty consistent from year to year. I have some many Gold Nugget fruits, I'm just cutting down all the branches. My neighbors like to complain that it attracts the rats.