The Tropical Fruit Forum

Janet, yes, I do usually get two different fruit crops (early-Mar/Apr, late- July/Sept) but never seen any loquats fruit for me in January.

Janet, that's interesting. None of my Big Jim fruits have ripened yet, all green still about half the size and growing bigger.

I did see one other variety that was almost starting to yellow, the Mogi.  I tasted the Champane fruits, and it was ripe, but taste is just ok, fruits were smaller than normal. The Champane is the only one in a pot with fruits, all the rest are grafted branches on my tree.

I have one that is an Ugli fruit, it gets fruits, much smaller than the ones I see on internet. Taste is average, hoping one year it will start tasting good but so far, no improvement here in SoCal. Maybe my tree is a seedling variety, and it is nothing special so far. It seems to be a dwarf type tree here.

John B, yes I feel for you. My wife would never let me buy as much budwood now at these prices. Luck for me I made majority of my orders back in 2004.

Lovetoplant, that's a good question about the Valentine pummelo. I have a large tree which gives lots of fruits, mostly large fruits but this year the fruits were only 1-1/2 lbs each or smaller. I just ate one fruit tonight and it wasn't as good as others on the tree. I will be picking a few more this week so I will post a few photos for you and give you feedback. I can tell you that it does not separate that easy into sections, kinda like an orange. It has many seeds, very juicy, most of the time it is very sweet with no acid taste, firmness similar to Washington navel orange. At least everyone I give the fruits away to say it was excellent. The Cocktail grapefruit is similar in the way it separates but I like the taste of Valentine better. I do have a special unk Valentine like hybrid I call "Tony1" from the guy who gave me a cutting years ago. The Tony1 is the large fruits in the photo with the rope tied to it, so it won't break off the fruit stem/branch. These fruits are better than Valentine and larger size.

Eric, I think I read somewhere that Meyer lemon is not compatible with all the other citrus so I would stick to using normal true lemons like Lisbon or Eureka. Also Meyer trees don't grow as fast or large as the Lisbon or Eureka.

I have grafted most everything on these two-lemon variety and have not had any that are not compatible. My multi-grafted trees are over 20 yrs old.

Millet probably will know more on this subject of the Meyer lemon.

I'm in SoCal so our ripening times are different. But when my Ponkan fruits ripen I can tell because they get pretty bright orange fully on the outside. Your tree may still be to young so in a few years the fruits may get better (sweeter).
My fruits ripen and tastes very good from December to March, but I usually pick them all by end of February. I still have about 10 ripe fruits left on the tree now and they taste very good.

Just curious if anyone else has their loquat tree with ripe fruits now. I have one small Champane tree which already had some flowers when I purchased the plant last fall, and those fruits are now ripe. To me this is unusual since all my other varieties just have small fruitlets, and none ripen until April/May at the earliest in Southern Calif.

mbmango, your Sumo and Gold Nugget looks pretty good colored up. Let us know when you taste your Sumo, look to see  if you find any seeds in the Sumo.

My Gold Nugget tree has many fruits, but they don't look as large as yours. I have been picking one or two to see if they are ripe but still not sweet, more acidic.

Goyo626, interesting that you found seeds in the Sumo. How many Sumo do you think you ate for the 10 seeds you found? I picked one very large Sumo (2019 graft) and gave it to a friend, and she said it was the best mandarin she had but she did fine 3 seeds in the one fruit. I plan on picking some Sumo from my older grafted trees (2017) on Vallentine Day and will report back on the total seeds I find in them.

Of the ripe mandarins in Jan-Feb, my Honey Murcott (CA honey) is the sweetest one, but it does have many seeds.

So far my favortie tasting mandarin this season is Ponkan, not as sweet as Honey Murcott but the Ponkan is almost seedless and fruits are much bigger, and it peels easy. The Honey Murcott skin sticks to the flesh so it's not as easy to peel them, and there's a lot of seeds in each fruit to spit out.

Post a few photos showing where you did the side graft and cleft grafts . It would make it easier to give better feedback to your questions.
It sounds like you did the right thing to leave a few leaves growing above your graft point. I always do the side graft and leave top growing until it takes. If you cleft graft, make sure you graft high enough so there are a few leaves below graft point (if possible). Then for both graft methods, if the scion fail, you can save the roostock . As soon as you see the new graft is failing, immediately cut off the bad graft portion.

Wow Simon, way to go. So huge and healthy.
Nice to hear you will have some available in the future, congrats !

I vote Brewster. Tree is vigorous, easy to care for, but one thing to remember is the following:

-> DO NOT PLANT CLOSE TO HOUSE  {give 10-15 ft clearance}

Here's my 35 year old Brewster I planted next to the front thinking it would be a nice medium size tree, Wrong!
But it is very productive, about 30-50 lbs of fruits each season, and tastes good. I'm in Fullerton CA.

Ok, thank for this info.

That's a nice looking tree. Where is the graft union ? Is it higher up on the rootstock?