Thanks Patty S.: Yes, these satsumas are the size of small oranges. Last year I had about 15 fruit on a 3 yr plant. Hopefully next year it will bear more. I just love the taste of these. Susan: When they are ripe -- like in mid-winter (at least for me), the kumquats are sweet-tart. Skin is sweet and juice is not all that tart. They are seedy though. The kumquat sits near a west-facing glass door in family room. Somewhat cooler in there than rest of house. I do not know how that compares with Nagamis that were allowed to tree-ripen until January. I would say they might be a bit better than ones I could buy in the store. The satsuma goes in garage with some light from south windows and fluorescents on timers. Temp in there gets no lower than 50-55 degrees minimum with heater on thermostat. During warm, sunny days, it can heat up to maybe 70 degrees in mid-winter and drops again at night. On average the garage is about 10 degrees warmer than the outside temperature. This post was edited by dave_in_nova on Thu, Sep 11, 14 at 14:53

I'm wondering whether it may have been the heat. I've seen tiny fruit (smaller than a dime) abort when the temperature soars... it looks rather like the epidermis got cooked or damaged, then cracked as the rest of the fruit kept growing. It would affect the most-exposed fruit, probably, though I've never seen quite that effect before. TMV is unlikely without foliage symptoms of some kind, and affected fruit typically stop growing, which means they wouldn't have that cracked-scab effect. I'd take a wait-and-see approach. Be careful to touch or brush past these plants last, and wash your hands after handling them; watch for any mottling of the leaves, growth distortion, or further fruit symptoms which affect all of the fruit on the branch or plant. If two weeks pass without seeing any other oddities, I think you can chalk it up to unusual environmental conditions. --Alison

[a week later...] Arlene_82, THANK YOU for this. This is exactly what I'm talking about. When deadheading, it's so important to have a sharp eye for this, and your placing the bachelor button bud side by side with the blown flower in this photo here is exactly what I need. (Yes: it's this Centaurea cyanus that I'm talking about.) The bud and the blown flower or ripening fruit can look remarkably similar, but the browning on the tip of the blown bachelor button here is the giveaway. I wish there were a website database of exactly these kinds of pairs. Another one I struggled with is "Brights Lights Cosmos” (Cosmos sulphureus). Here's the opened flower, with the composite head clearly evident: This is clearly a bud just beginning to open: Opening a bit more, the sepals opening and giving way to the petals: But what about this from the same plant? Is it a flower opening or closing? Cosmos is of course a member of the composite family with multiple flowers per head, so are these protruding pistils coming out as the flower is about to open or are they remnants as the flower is closing? I'd say it's just opening, and the individual flowers inside the head seem to open before the petals of the larger flower open. Ditto with this. I used to think this was a spent bloom, the petals already spun off, but now I suspect it may be a halfway stage between bud and opened flower, the pistils of each individual flower of the composite head protruding before the outside petals arrive. I'm sure I just need to study this more. Maybe I should put a rubber band over a stem where I see an obvious bud and then come back to it every day from start to finish and see what they all look like. Frustrating, but mostly fun.

They look like new artichokes to me, not 100% positive but it looks like it from your pictures. We normally get a second bunch of heads further down the stem after we pick the main heads - usually much smaller but still good eating. Kind of like when you chop the main broccoli head you'll get smaller shoots growing further down. If you cut yours back and get a fall crop you'll have to let me know - I've never cut back until the fruit bearing stem dies off (poor neglected artichokes that I barely pay attention to except when it comes around to eating time). I'd love to hear if you get a second crop doing that.