The Tropical Fruit Forum

So far the tree still looks perfectly healthy.  I'm going to put a bunch more in the ground.

I noticed my red limes get significantly sweeter the longer they sit on the tree.  The best ones I've had are ones I didn't notice were there at first and picked a month later than the rest.

You have a lot of mandarins (I think) that I don't know anything about.  I'd suggest a Nordman Seedless Kumqut if you like kumquats.  Seedlessness is really convenient. 

I have gotten fruit from most of my trees but not all.  Here are the ones I'm keeping for as long as I have space:

Moro blood orange
Tarocco blood orange
Sanguinelli blood orange
Bearss lime
Fukushu kumquat
Nordman seedless Nagami kumquat
Minneola tangelo
Nagami kumquat
Buddhas hand citron
Variegated Pink lemon
Sunquat
Owari satsuma
Marumi kumquat
Red clementine seedling
Xie Shan mandarin
Valentine pummelo
Flame grapefruit
White grapefruit
Kishu mandarin
Vaniglia sanuingo orange
Meiwa kumquat
Green Fingerlime
Red lime
Dekopan mandarin
Tango mandarin
Cara cara orange

And these are the ones that will be the first to go when I need to make room.  Either because I don't like the fruit or I have better alternatives.

Golden nugget mandarin
Tahoe gold mandarin
Key lime
Giant key lime
Limequat
Meyer lemon
Centennial variegated kumquat
Nippon orangequat
Indio mandarinquat
Chandler pummelo
Calomondin
Rangpur lime


I'm actually going to have to pare down to only a dozen in-ground citrus trees over time in my greenhouse, plus a few smaller ones in containers.  Tough choices ahead.

An excellent problem to have!  I just got some popsicle maker molds.  I'm going to try making popsicles from excess citrus juice

Today I planted my first tree directly into the dirt floor of my greenhouse.  This is a variegated minneola tangelo from Harris Citrus.  I chose this one because I have two of them the same size, and I believe they are grafted onto flying dragon rootstock.   Previously it was in a small rootmaker-roll pot.   I sprayed the roots with a hose to get off most of the container soil and after planting backfilled with only the same soil I dug from the hole, no amendments.  If this tree does well I will plant most of my trees into the dirt.

I've always heard the reason being that the relatively small plant isn't absorbing the majority of the moisture retained by the soil, so it stagnates.

Millet, that is the lime I'm referring to as excalibur red lime.  I wasn't able to find it anywhere when I was looking a year or two ago.   Thanks for finding a source, others may be interested.  I am hoping to graft a few copies of mine.

I have grown a few dozen FD seeds and I can confirm roughly 50% come true and it is rather easy to tell when they are still very young which are FD.   I had heard from others that >90% come true but my experience says otherwise

My experience buying gold nugget mandarins at the grocery store has been similar... often they are dried out and have puffy skin.   I try to buy ones that seem less puffy.

I have a golden nugget tree but haven't gotten fruit yet, so I can't comment on that part.

starling1 on this forum seems to have extensive knowledge of fingerlimes.  Maybe you'll hear from them here.

Here's a previous post with relevant information:  http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=10228.0

I have a green and a red fingerlime but I've only had one fruit (green) and it was underdeveloped.  The pulp did pop, and was the same size and consistency of sushi-roll roe (caviar) with a lime taste.  I'm looking forward to trying some properly developed fruits.

I believe starling1 mentioned that the common green and red varieties are poor, and only certain cultivars are worthwhile - ones I've never seen available in the US. 

I don't understand what their actual claim is.  It sounds like they are simply claiming to be able to bud-graft onto smaller-than-usual rootstock?  2mm diameter rootstock sounds difficult to work with for t-budding, but I'm not an experienced grafter.

"The Micro-budding process begins with rootstock, a small plant with approximately two-millimeter diameter stem germinated from a seed in a controlled environment," Skaria explained. "Buds from desirable mother trees are then hand-grafted onto the rootstock, using proprietary technologies. In less than six weeks, the buds have sprouted and are ready to be planted in the field."

As far as I can tell the claim for denser plantings is simply based on the trees costing less, rather than a difference in growth.

Ah, yes... I found another article that has more explanation.  That's exactly what it is:http://www.growingproduce.com/citrus/the-orange-revolution/

“The whole idea is to create a system that reduces costs to a point where you can plant more trees and get higher returns, especially in the first 10 years of the grove’s life,” says Skaria. “Research has proven that if you plant more trees, you will get higher returns. Now, we have a system that makes it affordable to plant more citrus trees, resulting from drastically reduced tree and planting costs.”

Skaria refers to his program as a “bailout” for Florida citrus that is bending under the weight of greening. Micro-budding is based on a modified cleft graft. This is generally difficult to do on young tissue, but a Texas nursery has developed a system to make citrus trees on a commercial scale.

more on cleft grafting:  http://www.fruitmentor.com/grafting-citrus-trees-cleft-graft
Skaria doesn't explain what his proprietary technique is, but I guess that what keeps it proprietary.   Still manual, it says

That's a really nice looking tree.  I've had some really excellent Marumi crops, too.   If you like these try Fukushu/Changshou kumquat and Meiwa kumquat.   Both are sweeter than Nagami.  Fukushu is my favorite citrus.

My Nippon Orangequat produces fruit as large as a mandarin.  It isn't very good, though.  I have most kumquats and hybrids and my experience is that while the skin is edible on the hybrids it isn't actually sweet like "true" kumquats such as nagami, marumi, fukushu, meiwa. 

I would love a kumquat-grapefruit hybrid.   Even better if more seedless kumquats were available. You