Satsuma Tree - SoCal fruits

[sc4001992]

I thought I would share some photos again of the satsuma tree that is very productive here in SoCal.

This tree had over 2,000 fruits last year. This year it looks to have about 1,000 fruits. I picked about 100 fruits today. The fruits on this tree usually are ripe from November - January.

Fruits are easy peel, seedless, and pretty sweet. Much sweeter than my Fallglo, Washington Navel, Lane Late, Cara Cara orange, or Kishu mandarin right now.

[sc4001992]

[sc4001992]

[SoCalGardenNut]

Wow Kaz, that is amazing, very big tree, my trees are small comparing to yours. But this is what I harvested yesterday before the rain. Only 1/4 of the tree.

[sc4001992]

Your fruits look good. Do you know what satsuma variety you have?

I don't know for sure which one this large tree is, probably over 15yrs old. The second tree is more of a dwarf growing satusma, it has over 1,000 fruits again and it is only 6-7ft tall x 10-12ft wide.

[SoCalGardenNut]

Thanks Kaz, I have no idea, I bought 2 satsuma trees from the guy at the local farmers market, and they are different.
Wow again for a dwarf satsuma tree that has 1000 fruit, I trim my trees to be poodle size, maybe 3.5 feet by 2.5 feet, I think I might have a total of 60-70 fruit.

[sc4001992]

Unless you have space, it is a good idea to keep it on the smaller size. After 100 fruits, you really can't eat them all. I always end up delivering/giving away more than 80% of the fruits. It takes time to pick them and give them away, so a smaller tree is the way to go. My trees are all multi-grafted with 10+ varieties, so it doesn't have too much of the same varieties.

[Millet]

SC400 your trees are always amazing.  You should write a book.

[sc4001992]

Thanks for the compliment. I think the soil in our area must be real good since most of the fruit trees grows healthy with hardly any fertilizer. I just water the trees and buy a bag of fertilizer if I remember once a year.

I also have a weird fruiting Oroblanco grapefruit tree, it has fruits in clumps of 4-6 so the fruiting branches are always sagging down. The Cocktail grapefruit has fruits that hangs the same way. I'll have to take a photo and show you what I mean.

Here's one of the smaller Cocktail grpaefruit trees with the fruit cluster. Each fruit is over 1 lb when ripe. I tried a few today and they are very good. Probably will be the best tasting citrus again for me. Some branches already broke off from the weight of the fruits. This tree was grafted 3yrs ago with the Cocktail grapefruit.

[dytandme]

Wow! What beautiful trees and fruit. I'd be happy to see a single cluster like yours on my potted trees.

[MasOlas]

Impressive. How does the cocktail grapefruit taste? Is it typical grapefruit flavor?

[sc4001992]

Thanks. No, the Cocktail (Mandalo) hybrid pomelo is different from any grapefruit that you eat. I keep calling it a grapefruit but it is not, it is a hybrid of a pomelo and mandarin, see the real description from CCPP link below. I like to eat it like a pomelo, separate the fruit sack and open each one like you would to eat a pomelo. The seeds easily come out and no messy juice when you separate the sack envelop from the flesh.

https://citrusvariety.ucr.edu/crc3555

The fruits are large, very sweet, with a little tartness, and lots of juice. Everyone that tastes this fruit for the first time say it's the best grapefruit they have had. Now I have a list of people (friends & relatives) that expect me to save a fruit for them for Christmas so I reserve so many for these friends and relatives when I see them.

I also have an old/large Valentine pomelo hybrid which I thought was better since it doesn't have any sour/tartness, but the more I compare the taste of these two fruits, the Cocktail grapefruit is the winner for me.
https://citrusvariety.ucr.edu/crc4182

I grow pretty much most of the mandarin, grapefruit, pomelo, lemons that UCR has, and the top fruit may be the Cocktail due to its taste, size, productivity. Check out my large Cocktail tree that keep posting the same photo of my record 30 fruits on one grafted branch from my tree (old photo). The fruits on this photo all ripened and weighed in over 1 lbs each.

[MasOlas]

Kaz,

Will these graft to a Valencia or a Moro Blood orange?

[sc4001992]

yes, no issue with grafting these on any citrus variety (lemon, orange, grapefruit, pomelo, kumquat). I even grafted a pomelo (banpeiyu) that is supposed to have fruits up to 10lbs each on my Australian finger lime tree.

[SoCalGardenNut]

Kaz, my sister has a Cocktail grapefruit but her grapefruits are not as big as yours. Thanks for saving me money regarding getting more pomelo scions from UCR. I’m not very successful in grafting them for some reason. So far one Sumo and one Murcott grafts were successful out of 20 or so citrus grafts.

[sc4001992]

ok, if you like good tasting citrus, the ones I still have because they taste good are the Valentine, Cocktail, Thong Dee (excellent), Melogold. People keep mentioning the Sarawak/Tahitian pummelo is good, but I didn't think so and I top worked my tree with other better tasting varieties.

Now the best pomelos I have are seedling varieties and they are better tasting than majority of the pomelos from UCR except for the Thong Dee.

But, if you like kumquats, one of the best tasting to me was the Indio Mandarinquat (VI 335). I ate fruits from the UCR research field and it was excellent, better than the Nagami kumquat since it is a much larger fruit and juicy and sweeter. But, I do have the seedless Nagami and it is nice since you can pop the entire fruit in your mouth and eat it all.

[poncirsguy]

This year I will have New Zealand lemonade.  I have pick 4 and have 4 more fruits to pick from this tree

[sc4001992]

Nice fruits on a small tree in pot. Did you bud graft it on the rootstock?

[SoCalGardenNut]

Kaz, I gave 2 Nagami Kumquat trees to my brother, I still have a Meiwa kumquat in my front yard, but TBTH, I really not that fond of kumquats.
I asked my neighbor what she thought is the best pomelo right now, she said Emerald Green, green skin, red inside. So that's what I’m going to acquire next.

[sc4001992]

Ok, she is right, that one is very good, I bought many from Weee online store. I'm not sure what the real variety name is, it may be buoi Da Xanh (Green Skin). There are a few other varieties from Vietnam that is supposed to be real good tasting called buoi Tien Vua, and buoi Tam Hong. The neat one is the Tien Vua, all red skin and red flesh.

I have a friend who is growing the green skin, red flesh pomelo so I hope to taste one from the tree in January.

[poncirsguy]

I T-Budded the NZL to sour orange.  I have 5 of them.  I will be giving 2 away to friends and family.

[sc4001992]

ok, the tree looks nice.

[poncirsguy]

ok, the tree looks nice.

Thankyou.  It was late so I could show my other 2 NZLs.  1 of them has given 6 fruit and the other will start giving fruit in about a month.

[sc4001992]

Wow, that's a lot of fruits on your NZ on NZ grafted tree. I do like the taste of NZ lemon.

[12Zodiac]

Should have thin my satsuma. Half my tree has broken branches.