You took me seriously? Lol sorry.

Your mandarin flowered twice as fast as a key lime. That's not exactly common.

Great job Matt. I hope this turns out much better fruit than you bought.

Wow mattcoug, that's fast! I read the forum thread at the link you posted. You said your sumo seed was fat. Mine is too, it's twice as big as a normal mandarin seed. From what I've read of orange seeds, I'm guessing it's polyembryonic. Hope mine will take off like yours. Anyway, thanks for sharing your sumo seedling experience. Now I have to try and sprout my seed. So I've put it in a moist paper towel, in a plastic bag, in a warm location like Tom suggested.

But did the fruit hang on? Sometimes you will get an early bloom and then the plant balks for another 10 years!

Best way to start citrus seed for me is to plant them in a large pot with at least 50% perlite and good potting soil. Keep soil evenly moist.

With baggy method there's always a chance soil could get too wet. But if you've used this method before, then you should know that.

My sumo seed germinated in the moist towel in a plastic bag. The seed broke open and a little root starting appearing. I put it in a moist cup of potting mix. Now I'll wait for it to pop up.

'moist cup of potting mix'

With a pot that's too small it can be harder to regulate the moisture level of the soil.

There is a much bigger chance of using a cup too big with a seed. Always start small and work your way up. It's easier to fix underwatering than overwatering.

Thanks. I'll keep an eye on the moisture level. It's placed under grow lights with my indoor veggies and calamondin seedling. My calamondin seedling is responding well to the setup.

One thing I'm wondering about - I wet the mix first with foliage-pro spiked water when planting the seed (1 tsp/gallon). That wasn't on purpose - I had watered some trees with the watering can earlier and forgot it was 'juiced'. Is it best not to fertilize the mix when planting citrus seeds? I know some potting mixes can burn vegetable seedlings, I'm still very inexperienced at citrus seedlings. I'm using ocean forest potting mix.

Ocean forest is a "hot" mix. I would have flushed it real well then watered with foliage pro.

How is the seed? It should germinate by now.

matt i read your link and your seed may be a zygotic seedling as the leaves do not look like dekopon leaves all the trees i have seen look like mandarin leaves yours look much larger and much more glossy and i am impressed with the growth you got out of that thing, my sumo is just 1 year old and about 1 foot tall with about 8 branches, and the leaves are all small and mandarin like. not like other seeds i have grown.

Matt Your tree has 3 choices. It will produce fruit better tasting than the fruit it came from, just as good, or not as good. 2 out of 3 chances for happiness sounds like great odds to me.

But likely Sumo, like most other citrus, have a high % of nucellar embryos. So very likely it will come true.

The seed sprouted in the moist paper towel quickly. I then put it in a cup with potting mix where it broke out of the dirt. After it barely popped up, it suddenly stopped growing and has changed little in appearance for the last few weeks.

Probably, and hopefully, it's putting on root growth and in a short while will put out top growth after that. As long as everything goes well. Seedlings, like all babies, are touchy and delicate.

But like babies, time takes care of most issues, providing food, water and everything else is fine.

Yeah, citrus grow in spurts. When the roots aren't growing, the foliage is, and when the foliage isn't, the roots are (given adequate temperatures). As for babies, the one thing Barb left out is money!

-Tom

mine did the same thing it had only 4 leaves for the first 3 months before it finally started putting out more top growth, it took it about 9 months to get 6 inches tall with about 8 leaves it is now 1 year old and doing quite well but still only about 12 inches tall, i have found the sumo to be VERY slow growing. at the 3 month mark it still hadnt grown at all so i dug it up to find fresh white root growth and repotted it. just be patient and it will be fine and dont over water it or force feed it too much just give it light, water, a little food and TIME and it will be a good little tree. here is mine at the 1 year mark.

Trees are very different to their growth pasterns.

Seed grown Nagami kumquat after 3 years.

Seed grown sweetlee tangerine tree after 2 years 7 months

Because citrus is HUNGRY I feed, feed, and feed with 24-8-16 with micros and augment with 32-0-4 to give them the extra kick in the root base.

Good luck with your sumo trees They will need to put out over 100 leaf node and may take up to 200 node. My tangerine tree was about 110 with no flowering.

I found this to be the best way to grow a young citrus from seed in its first summer year for maximum growth. Easy to transplant to

bottomless container tree

My seedling is now almost 13 months, both fruit are growing. They are reaching 2/3 the size of a marble. I put the baby tree outside again to get stronger UV light, IIRC the windows block most UV.

I am not sure on the zygotic issue. The glossy leaves in the photos were very young, only a few weeks; they have now hardened up a bit and are a darker green and less shiny. In the 'mangosteen office' the temps are very high 24/7, so they grew crazily much faster than typical and got 2x as big as the leaves that grew when it was outside in direct sunlight. The leaves look more like my satsumas than my navels.

According to reading I have done, the inter-node length and branching density correlates well to temperature and stress, so comparing the photos of Josh's tree with my own, I suspect the difference is possible to be less genetic, and more environmental, given that our trees are grown in significantly different conditions.

I suppose we have to wait to taste the fruit to know if I have a winner(clone or better), but 2 out of 3 chance ain't bad :).

I'll grab updated pics to share once the El Nino rains subside.

On a side note, I just ate my first gold nugget from a new tree outside. I can't understand how farmers can sell the nasty fruit in stores, when off the tree these are so sublime. I am hoping this sumo get the same flavor boost.

And my tree may not be the best to compare to anyway matt lol as my tree was from 1 seed that produced 3 seedlings 2 germinated and grew to 3 inches within a week and died, this embryo emerged last and was 1/3 the size of the other two and started growing after the other two had all but damped off. i believe mine could possibly be zygotic but who knows really. and my tree spent its life pretty much outdoors in direct sunlight in Socal facing a southwest exposure so it gets direct sunlight from 8am to 4pm typically and it was a HOT BRIGHT summer so maybe the such intense light is why it is so small and dense. every node on the tree is branching this tree now has about 13 branches growing and is only 12 inches tall. but i do agree with you that the environment may be the key to why our trees look so different but you must be doing something right for it to flower and fruit so early!! i have kept detailed pictures from the day this embryo emerged every few weeks of growth.

The rain let up so I grabbed a couple shots. It is 12-13 months from planting now. A snail got a couple leaves on bottom, but otherwise it growing and hanging onto two fruit.

very nice. I hope the fruit is good. It is now known fact that citrus can flower within 15 months of seed sprout.

My sumo seedling didnt make it. Was looking good at first, then just turned yellow and died.

thats kinda what happened to the first 2 of mine and started to happen to the 3rd but i got it through it, i had it inside under lamps and then moved it outside to partial shade and then into full sunlight. after that it was fine.

Dave I am sorry to hear that. I have found that most seeds I plant germinate and most seeds that germinate, die.. It is the one part of citrus seed growing that I don't like. Don't give up. I find that once a seed grow tree takes off, it will do better than a grafted tree.

Hi mattcoug how is your sumo doing?

diveval some good news and some bad news. The tree was doing really well until about September when it suddenly started dropping leaves. I figured it was the heat so I moved the tree into shade but it wasn't getting better. Eventually I dug around in the pot and found that I had "fertilizing help", to the tune of a 1 inch layer of solid Osmocote in the soil! Names wont be named, but the tree defoliated and lost most growth. I washed all the soil from the roots and re-potted it with clean soil, and now is it starting a spring flush, so I am hoping it will get back to it's former glory.

On a side note, I was extremely lucky this year in getting seeds. I got a few Sumos that were full of seeds that I planted and now have 8 new little seedlings that germinated in the past couple weeks.

Hi mattcoug. I hope your tree pulls through.

After eating about 15 sumos, I found 2 seeds. I let them germinate in damp paper towels. They are now in 5-1-1 but have yet to put out shoots.

The appearance of fruit on Mattcoug's immature Sumo (Dekopon) seedling is a rare occurrence indeed, but does rarely happen, and it happens mostly with grapefruit. Almost always the flower and resulting fruit develops on the terminal end of the tree. The general course of events when this happens, is a flower appears on the terminal (top) of the young immature seedling. Sometimes the flower results in a fruit. Normally the fruit is discarded by the tree, but not always. I have known of only one tree that held such a fruit to maturity, and that was on a grapefruit. Almost always (or always) after this rare event happens, the tree will not produce another flower nor fruit until the tree grows enough to develop mature wood, approximately 6 to 10 years later.

Good luck with your sumo, mattcoug. I see much more sumos in stores this year, but I'm not going to buy a bunch to find a seed this time. They're $3.50/lb around here.

Silica, that very interesting. Thanks for the info.

Vladimir, goodluck with your seeds too.

Found 2 dekopon seeds, both sprouted in a paper towel inside a ziplock bag that I kept over a small fride that generated a lot of heat (I was on a hotel on a business trip in Florida so I had to improvise). When I arrived home, I planted them in peat soil pellets, i got excited too soon and decided to move it to a small pot, and killed it. The second one seems to be doing good (is the third one). The other three are kaffir/makrut lime that I took out of a limonade that I was drinking at a restaurant. I live in Guatemala and both dekopon and the makrut are impossible o obtain.

If I understand you have 2 seed sprouts left. Best of luck to you. I have found starting from seed quite hard. Once my seed has a root of 4 centimeters I will lift the tree out so that 1 cm is showing. This will protect the tender green stem from damp-off

Meiwa · More Info

6b Steve

I really enjoyed reading all this. I too found a Sumo seed and germinated it. I just now put it in some miracle grow potting mixture which may kill the little darling......I don’t know the first thing about grown plants, but it is so satisfying to try and hopefully watch it grow into something, even if it just a spindly thing

Yes its it's a fun hobby to watch the fruits of our labor develop :) pun intended. Someone stole my tree a few months after posting my last update. It was set outside my garage at my apartment... I think it was around that time I lost faith in humanity lol who steals a tree.. good luck to you and enjoy watching your baby grow.

Good luck, Christine. I found a few more sumo seeds this winter, trying to germinate them now. I'll probably never see fruit from them, but I want to see what a sumo tree looks like In person.

I'm tired of having to repeatedly re-answer questions.

There have been detailed threads started in the past about how to germinate citrus seeds.

Probably many people reading your thread won't bother to put in the effort to give you a detailed answer, because it's already been extensively discussed before, and no doubt is going to be repeatedly asked again, and these threads just disappear down the list into oblivion, so what's the point?

Sound a little harsh? Yes. But maybe you should have tried finding one of the old threads about this first. That's just reality. Sometimes it's not worth putting in the effort to give an answer, not when the answer is long.

This forum also has a really terrible search function, so it would take too much of my effort trying to find one of these old threads for you.

Here's a really short and lazy answer.

Put the seeds in a sealed plastic bag with a moist paper towel. Warm place. Maybe about 2 weeks.

Seeds sprout.

Put inside enclosure to hold in humidity with artificial light, indoors. Keep soil moist but not too wet. Water every 2 or 3 days.

Preferably peel the outer coating off the seeds so they can sprout more easily.

Citrus seeds often don't last very long, so don't think you can dry them out and save them.

It's more complicated than this, but this is the short and lazy answer.

I really didn't expect a detailed reply to this question 4 years later, but thanks. Yes, since then I have found the moist towel method to work very well germinating citrus seeds. Mostly I germinate calamondins and they germinate fairly quickly for me even without peeling the outer coating.

Sumo seed

Pregnant wife of sumo wrestler carries husband's "seed"

Here’s an even shorter answer. Plant seed 1/2” down in pot of good soil. Water and wait.

hey guys, where can I guy a sumo seed? I found a seed and it sprouted in the paper towel but now it won't grow in the pot. I need more seeds. thanks!

Buy more Sumos! I found 12 seeds in a Sumo once. Rather unusual. I've got two small seedlings going now. But, I also have a grafted Sumo that's 5 feet high, so the seedlings are just for fun.

Honestly the best way to start a citrus seed is to just sow directly in a pot of soil. Forget the paper towel thing. If you are able to remove the papery husk without damaging the kernel, that might speed germination, but it's not necessary.

Hello! Im hoping to get a little insight about a sumo seed I germinated. Its the weirdest thing, but it seems like I have two trees growing from one seed. When the roots originally sprouted, there was two of them. I didnt think anything of it, but now it appears that I have to separate trees growing. Should I clip one? Do I keep them both? Is this even possible? ( clearly it is, but I've never heard of twins in horticulture.) Thanks in advance for your input

Keep them both and separate them after they have grown 3 to 5 inches.
Steve

I’m in Denver. This sumo is 12 months old. It got a flower at 9 months.

This was the same at sprouting time last year.

I found 5 seeds and one is germinating in the moist paper tower, ziplock method.

This is some kind of orange tree that I planted from seed 10 years ago. It has never flowered. I’m kind of upset with it, and don’t care if it passes away. Labor of love, moving it inside/outside depending on the temperature.

When you grow from seed, the tree typically takes much longer and has to get to a bigger size before it will begin to fruit.

That's why almost all fruit trees are usually grafted on to special variety rootstock, it creates a slight dwarfing effect, pushing the tree to fruit earlier in it's lifespan, as energy gets directed away from growth and instead towards fruit.

Energy never was "directed away from growth" by a dwarfing rootstock such as Flying Dragon. Nor was the supposed redirected energy switched over to flowering. With a dwarf rootstock it is not redirecting energy, rather the reduced growth is genetic.