Citrus > Citrus General Discussion
Is it worth growing out store bought citrus fruit seeds?
Filozophr:
Blood orange, orange, mandarin and lemon. I grew out seedlings for these in hopes of one day grafting branches of them to another mature (what seems to be a seedling) citrus that I have in ground at home. The fruit it makes taste like soap, so instead of cutting it down and wasting rootstock I was thinking I could graft to, then I found ought citrus grafting is “hard” so I’m not sure what to do now other than discard all my seedlings, chop the tree down and buy grafted trees.
pagnr:
You can rework trees by budding. Chip budding is fairly easy, T budding is fairly easy if conditions are right.
It would be good to learn budding and grafting.
Growing rootstocks and propagating fruit trees yourself might be the only way to obtain some varieties.
Also you may need to rescue some failing trees etc
Of the Citrus you mention, Lemon is probably the best bet for a good fruit. If it isn't the greatest lemon, i.e. smaller or thick peel, it is still a lemon.
Blood Orange seedlings could be variable in pigmentation. Light Blood oranges are still nice, if the pigment is lower.
Arnold Blood is a seedling of Moro, and is a very nice tree.
Mandarin seedlings could be a bit of a mix, depending on the actual variety. If the seedlings are pretty uniform, its probably true to the parent variety.
Oranges should be OK, seedlings could be possibly more seedy, or less sweet in my experience.
There are many Orange varieties. some do better in particular climates.
Galatians522:
Here is my 2 cents for what it is worth. I have found citrus to be one of the easier things to bud or graft. I did T-budding an had great success with little experience. I imagine that bark grafting would be highly successful as well. Make sure that the tree is starting to grow and the bark will be slipping. Most oranges in the store are Washington Navel and most mandarins are Clementine. Neither does that well in Florida and the Clementine (Cutie/Halo) will likely not come true to type (although in this case that may be a good thing). The blood orange will probably not have red flesh because it will not get enough cold in your area (even if it does come true to type). I am a lot further north than you and our sanguinelli was only about 50% red most of the time--although the flavor was very unique and special. As mentioned the Lemon should be ok, but it does not need grafted. In the end, what have you got to lose? It won't cost much and you may get something special.
1rainman:
This was the big debate on some other post I was having. In my experience citrus grown from seed reverts back to a wild form maybe 95% of the time. You get a larger, healthier tree, sometimes more thorny, usually with sub-par fruit. The fruit can be edible sometimes, but may not be the best tasting, full of seeds, oftentimes sour (not always). The only thing I have seen around here that grows good fruit from seed is grapefruit. These taste the same as the parent, or even better, but pretty close to the parent, though grown from seed is a much larger healthier tree. Its the size of a shade tree with fruit too high to reach sometimes.
If you have space to grow it- why not? Who knows what you'll get. Might get a good shade tree if nothing else. Can always graft something sweeter onto it if you want. If you get sour oranges generally you can use them exactly like you would a lemon and make a lemonaide type of beverage from it. If the tree sucks, you can pull it up and it cost you nothing to grow it basically.
They have citrus where every branch is a different variety. You could graft a lemon onto one branch, a tangerine onto another and so on if you wanted to.
poncirsguy:
If you are planting in ground then it is worth trying. Most citrus grow true from seed as the mother tree.
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