The Tropical Fruit Forum

I bought seeds. Didn't want to risk an expensive plant to the elements so risked multiple seedlings instead.

Look up early satsumas. Xie Shan is one, takes a few years to produce very good quality fruits. Not for zone 7 though. Prague is the best bet for non-hybrid cold hardy citrus (it's a chimera). Fruit ripens Nov-Dec. Mine have survived 1 winter unprotected with some damage, zone 7a.

Here's some of the other grafts, they are either prague or morton. Tbuds that didn't push out. Pictures are from today. I forgot to label but easy to detect from leaves when they grow next season.








1 winter already survived:

Multi grafted taitri. Prague is the center trunk:


Prague trunk closeup




Prague on poncirus, 2 years old with 1 winter survived in ground. Grows very slowly. Rootstock is probably the culprit.




Prague on taitri, this was a small graft on a taitri branch inground I did last year that I thought died. The graft survived the winter and began to grow.
I clipped it off and rooted it with the branch. The left over branch on the tree I grafted with Bishop Citrandarin.


I will plant it out next spring, on taitri it will grow very fast compared to poncirus.

I did some mid summer tbud grafts on a bunch of poncirus year old trees and discovered this Prague graft pushed out. This must have been due to the heat wave we had earlier in the month. I topped the rootstock hoping it will help harden off. Leaving some of poncirus buds in case the Prague perishes.

I now have 4 actively growing grafts of Prague, 2 on poncirus and 2 on taitri... at this rate I will have an orchard lol

My kadsura survived it's first winter in zone 7a with damage but has recovered and is now growing a vine

To be honest I'm more interested in sampling the fruit of each. I prefer more vigorous rootstocks.

Unfortunately the parks in NJ are very anti-collection, so I'd recommend against taking any fruit but I suppose it's only an issue if you get caught (joking). I am not sure how PA is in that regard as I know people collect pawpaw fruit from parks without a problem! I'm not sure what they do with the excess fruit, I looked under the tree and it was relatively clean just a few small aborted fruit here and there, fruit is probably raked and discarded. I did not see any seedlings anywhere

I grafted a seedling of a limequat, cotyledons still present and left leaves grafted it on a year old top worked grapefruit. I put a bottle over it in the shade and it the graft took.

I will have to keep up pruning so one variety doesn't take over. Ichang papeda is probably the most frost tender, I doubt it will take -18c but I am hoping that tai-tri is vigorous enough in the spring to help it grow and recover any damage like it did for the Prague

Was the plant smuggled from China? Just curious about citrus diseases. Otherwise if you guys really wanted it we could do a group buy, and cut scions from it. Would need a growing season or two though to put on some size for scions. Yeah maybe better to wait haha

I received a scion from a trade and t-bud grafted some as well bark grafting Thomasville citrangequat onto the following:

Sour orange (bark graft in pot)
Poncirus (bark graft in pot & bud in ground)
Taitri (bark graft & bud in ground)
Citrumelo (bud in pot)

As well as a small cutting for rooting in cococoir.

These are late grafts and I don't expect the buds to push out, but the bark grafts where I top worked the rootstocks might. The potted stuff will go indoors over winter. The bark graft to taitri is very solid wood so I hope it is lignified enough, if it takes at all, to survive winter we'll see

I also did Morton x Meiwa pollen


 

Mine flowered as a rooted cutting, I think I bought it in 2021. It gets root rotting in my wet media while indoors but recovers in the spring. I changed the pot to a smaller one and refreshed the potting mix with lots of perlite.

I finally grafted some to poncirus outside. Already have one on taitri and had one on citrumelo which didn't survive. So we'll see how they do on those rootstocks outdoors.

Good luck with your Morton 🍀