A great thread / discussion! I have several winners, the Bearss lime, Eustis Limequat, and Okitsu Wase Satsuma. All very heavy producers and are now ready to enjoy. I just harvested dozens this weekend. If i had to pick one, its the Okitsu. The Meyers are just yellowing up, so good as lemons, but have not developed the desired sweetness yet. The Lisbons, Owari, and Page are productive, but not ready to harvest either. And with a forecast low of 22F later this week, i am unsure if i will have any to enjoy at all this season. A surprise winner last year for me was the Moro.... wow. I have a positive opinion of the Nippon Orangequat is productive, a beautiful hedge and is great for unique cocktails. Another surprise is the Millsweet Limetta. My Loser: the Indio Mandarinquat. It has an unusual taste that has yet to find a use.

Hi all, new to the forum. :) Hubby and I are gardening in Wheat Ridge. 2013's good, bad, and just plain weird... Yellow Cherry went steroidal on us, breaking down the biggest tomato cage we had. It had so many fruits on just one plant that I made tomato juice out of self-defense (it was delicious, btw). Golden Jubilee was a big disappointment. It ripened one fruit, which I never tasted because my visiting six-year-old niece was so enthralled with it that I gave it to her. The plant unfortunately never produced any more, but I'm hoping it was a good investment in the next generation of gardeners. Siletz had what I ended up calling "Teenage Mutant Ninja Tomatoes". It producedvery well, but the fruits were the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Almost all of them had what looked like stubby fingers growing from inside the fruit out through the blossom end. We later heard that there was a seed lot that had this strange mutation - evidently our packet was from that lot. (I had thought it was maybe our proximity to Rocky Flats!) They tasted fine, but were very weird-looking! Burgundy okra was a definite winner. I grew it out front in a rose bed we'd built that we didn't have the budget to plant entirely in roses. The okra flowers were pretty and occasioned lots of questions from neighbors who didn't know what it was, and we got enough okra pods to freeze a few bags. We haven't used it all up yet. Sugar Snap peas (the pole type) - another big winner. Nice fat, sweet pods and lots of them. We froze a bunch of these and are still enjoying them. Giant Marconi peppers - our first successful year with these. They really were giant! Good producer, too. Brassicas in general did rather poorly for us this year. Spring broccoli didn't produce till October, only one head of cabbage survived, and the cauliflower died the moment it was set out. Hard to tell with the potatoes. They got caught in that September deluge as we were starting to dry down the vines, and almost every spud split because of the sudden excessive moisture. They taste good, but look awful. That was our 2013...

To follow up, in early February my Anna Schwartz squashes in storage have all turned tasteless and miserable to eat. Too bad, the shells are so wonderfully hard that they serve as bowls to eat from. But I'm not interested if it can't be stored into February and beyond. Winter Sweet however is still a delight and is my choice going forward. Still looking for the longest storing and best tasting C Maxima in the 3-5 pound range.

New-to-me this year: Winners: * Curry plant. Found in the herb section of the garden center. Terrific silvery needle-like foliage, a perfect foil for the rich color of "Black Pearl" ornamental pepper (always a winner!) * "Crackerjack" marigolds. Wanted a tall marigold for the vegetable garden for the purported bug-repelling capabilities, and I was really impressed with these. Once they took off, they really took off and turned into bushy bloomin' machines. This came in a mix, but most of the flowers were golden yellow, which I liked. I also grew some shorter marigolds - I think they were Inca but I'm not sure. They were also nice and bloomed like crazy. Vegetable garden plants here again. * Salvia "Cathedral". My go-to spiked salvia is "Mystic Spires", which never fails to disappoint, but I did pick up a replacement six-pack of "Cathedral" in the spring for some reason - can't remember if I balked at the price of M.S. or the nursery was out of them. This was because the dog trampled my planting of MS.... Anyway, they bloomed their heads off and looked terrific all summer, bees were all over them, which is always a good thing. I still prefer MS - the foliage has the advantage, but this is a good substitute should I need one. * Calendula "Costa Mix". Gorgeous calendula mix, grew and flowered beautifully. The only thing about calendula is they poop out when the hot weather sets in - treat them like pansies in that respect. I never got around to sowing more for fall plant-out, I'll have to try to do that next year. What's great is they come into their own when a lot of other annuals are just getting started. Will definitely grow for spring-early summer bloom next year. Losers: * Magellan zinnia "Scarlet". The flower color isn't a rich blue-based red, it's a bright orange-red. Not my color. Glad I planted a patch in the veggie garden as a test where I didn't pay them much mind or I would have ripped them out as soon as they bloomed. Kudos for sheer volume of bloom, though. On the fence: * "Empress of India" nasturtium. I couldn't even see the flowers for all the foliage. Which is fine because I loved the blue-green foliage. Not sure I'd grow again because the point of annuals up here in my zone is flower power - but if I need that particular foliage effect in the future, this would fit the bill nicely.