Here is my miho satsuma:

owari satsuma below. Will try the fruit tonight

NZ lemonade below. Can't tell if it's ripe yet. Feels hard. Loaded with blossoms but am worried because it dropping leaves like crazy.

This is the huge meyer lemon below I got for free on Craigs list. It is loaded with blossoms.

Vladimir, your fruit and trees are so beautiful! Your Owari Satsuma and New Zealand Lemonade are huge compared to mine. Lol. Please keep us posted after you cut into and indulge in the fruit! :) I want to hear your review on the texture, flavor and ease of peel. Thanks. :)

ok, WOWOWOWOWO did this thread take off with so many beautiful trees in such a fast time..I had no idea so many had so many beautiful trees here whether inground of in pots!

Jinny, how do you know when to water your trees? How do you gauge? Are you ever afraid you might water too early before they dry out? Your trees show no signs of stress or bugs and are so green. No twisting or curling leaves, just nice and flat and green. Love them all.

John, weren't you in a drought for a while there? I could use all that rain here plus more. You are so lucky to get that much !

Steve, as I always tell you, you are creative and certainly know how to keep your trees going all year!.

Molewacker, I could only DREAM of having a tree like that so loaded with fruit that it looks like ornaments on a Christmas tree! So beautiful..It must of been hard to strip that fruit off since it is just so colorful..Nice.Thank you

Cori, nice work too..You guys all amaze me.

Beaconeater....Do you spray your trees to keep pests at bay outdoors? Your tree seems so flawless and so green and full..You must be doing something right. What is your fertilizer regimen and what do you use if you don't mind sharing..Do you watch the pH or do you have too? Such a beautiful tree!

Mike: I have seen some bugs getting at the fruit and have been considering spraying. They haven't gotten into too many oranges but I don't want to encourage them. The trees new growth got hit pretty good with citrus leaf miner this year. I have only had the house two months so I can't say what the previous owners did (besides neglect to water the tree while it was in a short sale). If I see things with bugs continuing through the winter and spring I'll certainly be looking at some sort of control.

It's improved quite a bit with just a regular watering schedule. I have only put some Dr Earth citrus fertilizer on the tree as it was pretty water stressed for an extended period of time. The soil has a good bit of clay but is probably sandy loam like most of San Diego. It drains well and the tree seems to like it. Soil tests are going to happen closer to spring when I plant. (Lots of other projects right now)

edit: Just wanted to also say that I am always open to suggestions as I am learning!

Your trees look great you guys! Jinny, the ST looks very happy and healthy now. Believe it or not, I'm still not home. I've been running all day - classes with my daughters followed by swimming (for both of us ;-), then piano, and I just finished a college meeting for parents at my son's high school. Tomorrow I'll snap some pics. I'm going to sleep well tonight! I've really enjoyed seeing everyone's pics. Vladimir, tell us how that satsuma tastes!

My wife and I just had the owari satsuma and it was delicious. Easy to peel, juicy, very flavorful with just the right amount of sweetness and tartness. So glad I got it.

Thank you, Vladimir. I look forward to getting my first ripe fruit. It will be a while though.

Mike, yes, it was REALLY dry for a while and I was watering a few of my trees. Now it's so wet the ground "squishes" when I walk. It's a wonder I can grow citrus here. Every citrus label I read says to plant in well-drained soil.

So many beautiful trees! I love seeing the month-by-month transitions... great idea, Mike.

Here's what I have thus far with plants under 3000 W of metal halide lamps. I'll probably be ordering budwood from the CCPP in January or February because the rootstocks I started are getting near T-budding diameter.

Grow room:

Not so strangely, everything started putting out a flush of growth when I brought them inside early this fall... probably because of the late-summer heat we were having. It topped 84*F in my house during that time... now that winter has reared its ugly head, it only hit 69* today with the lights on.

Xie Shan's first bloom (and subsequent fruit set). I'll have to prune some of those fruit off because there are way too many on there!

Self-grafted Moro:

Parent Moro who nearly died 2 years ago before I had to perform an emergency bare-root in late winter:

Habanero and rootstocks (C-35, US-897, Seville sour orange) in no particular order:

Self-grafted Tarocco blood orange:

Valencia orange. This was the first year it didn't suffer significant leaf drop from bringing it inside, despite doing nothing differently.

-Tom

P.S. No police yet.

Lol Tom! That's great! No poiice for me either, thankfully!

Here are some of mine...

More..

Last ones - promise!

A lot of healthy trees and delicious looking fruit! I long for the day when my Nagami seedling begins to bear fruit. For now, I'm waiting on my Moro blood oranges and my Meyer lemons to ripen.

Moro:

Meyer:

Pink Eureka:

Pomelo:

Nice Josh! Can you post a close up of the blood oranges? What type? How old is your tree?

Sure, Laura. I think I have a pic from recently. I'm tempted to try one of them!

The tree is about 6 years old. It's a Moro.

Oh nice!!! How tall is it? Are these your first oranges? Sorry for all the questions...I have a sanguinelli from FW and it is blooming now. It is probably 3-4 years old but has grown nicely. If it manages to set any oranges, I guess I should let it only keep one right?

I've been getting oranges for three years now, but it tends to bear light, then heavier.
The tree itself has been kept compact, so it's probably about two feet tall, maybe a bit taller than that.

That is very encouraging Josh. Thank you!! That looks delicious!!!

I have only had a couple of blood oranges and I LOVE the flavor. I'm trying to get a couple of trees to grow. One I posted a discussion on hasn't fruited since the few fruit it had when I planted it. I have a second little one I planted last fall. I let it carry a couple of fruit but they really didn't fill out.

Everyone's citrus leaves look soooo much healthier than my in-ground trees! The leaf miners and whiteflies take a toll on them.

I picked Ponderosa lemons yesterday. I'm stuck somewhere between overwhelmed as a hobbyist and not enough for a commercial operation.

OMG John! Wow! Can you set up a little farm stand??? Contact local restaurants??

Well, I know some folks at a couple of restaurants who like them. I don't know if they juice them for recipes or eat them at home. They don't work well for tea lemons since they have so many seeds and the peel is really thick. I just box them up and share them around. It's fun to see the reactions from folks who haven't seen Ponderosas :>)

Here is one of my favorite successes. My soil is poorly drained, compact clay. It's fertile but aeration is terrible and the roots have to fight through dense material to grow out during drier season and they are probably not aerated enough during the wet season. I REALLY wanted to try a tangerine. I think my winter temps are borderline for being able to plant in-ground so I picked a well-sheltered place on teh south side of my house and built a raised planter and filled it with river sand and supplemented with lots of organic material.

Here it is in August 2014

Rootstock

Molewhacker, you mentioned the Meyer tree in your pic is one of your youngest- how old is it? It is beautiful!

John, wow, nice wheelbarrow full of lemons!

Hello everyone! Here's a couple pics of my lemons.

The largest of my three little lemonade trees has four lemons. Here's a pic (below) of their current size. I love the look of this peel, like tight pointillism on the rind!

The lemons on my Meyer are much larger, see below. There's about six or seven of them.

John - Holy !!! , thats a lot of lemons , maybe u can make some gourmet marmalade or candied peel as well . I usually get 10-12 out of my indoor plant n make some sort of Jam/Marmalade mixed with Kumquats or Calamondin .

Nice trees and pics on this thread - wow!

The Meyer I pictured was planted in late 2012 and moved to its present location in May of 2013. It took about a year to recover from the transplant. BTW- see the severe freeze damage on the trunk In the earlier pic (when you zoom in you can see that NE side of the trunk is being grown over).

Here it is in June of 2013. You can see the big redwood stump clearly in this pic.... I removed 19 110+ft redwoods in 2012.

Borrowing a line from Agatha Christie....And then there was one,,

I noticed my calamondin is blooming so I'll share this one I'll call...Beauty and the Beast....because of the rough-looking leaf miner infested leaves. Looks like it may also be time to add a little magnesium sulfate.

Here is a Ponderosa tree I rooted from an air-layered branch. It made it's first lemon this year. I air layered it in spring 2014. This is a cool alternative to grafting but only if the native roots are compatible with your soil.

BEAUTIFUL trees everyone! Please, keep them coming. They make me smile on these very long dark days..They must bring much pleasure to all of you growing them for all different reasons, whether inside or outside...)

This single, Genoa Lemon is turning color rather quickly despite the cold temperatures in the sunroom. The fruit is firm but has a bit of give. It is almost ready to harvest, so I will pick it off of the tree this weekend as I want to use the peel and juice in my lemon Christmas cookies that I will be making and baking.

The Nagami Kumquat fruit are also turning color rather quickly.. I think that I will try one that is still partially green because the fruit is soft when I give it a gentle squeeze. . :)

I enjoyed all the pictures you guys and gals are posting. Give yourselves a pat on the back because your trees are beautiful!

I will be busy over the next few weeks getting prepared for Christmas, so I want to wish you all a "Merry Christmas". Have a blessed and safe holiday! :)

Citrus fruit will soften up when the tree is thirsty and may not be ripe. Nagami kumquats are quit sour

6b Steve

One of my 3 Meyers tree's doing well in the basement under lights

Nice looking trees and fruit everybody. Here's a couple of mine.

My Citrus Garden · More Info

My Citrus Garden · More Info

My Citrus Garden · More Info

PKG, nice trees!!! Is the tarocco as delicious as I've heard?? I've heard it's the most temperamental of the blood oranges, but the tastiest. Bob, those trees look great!!! I love the shape of the Meyer. How old is the tree? Yeah, with a setup like that, you don't need a greenhouse ;-)

Meyer tree from Harris bought i believe spring of 2013. I got fruits last winter also.(6). Temps 71* night and day.

Bob.

Got one patio Meyer tree from Walmart, leftover late summer 2013 that was near death. It has 17 fruits in varying sizes.

Laura, the Tarocco really is a thirsty tree and seems to need water every 5 days or so when we don't have rain, which is quite often out here in So. Cal. Does not flush all that often like other Orange trees it seems.

The only fruit I've tasted from it was not quite ready yet and the flesh was still firm hence a little bit "rangey". However It had a different flavor than a Washington Navel from what I could tell. Waiting for them to blush a little bit with the temperatures dipping into the low 40's in the next few nights.

Everyone's trees are looking great for December. I had to give my key lime trees a buzz cut today. The first photo is on November 22nd, the second pic is today. This is the same tree I trimmed in September, it had 6' of top growth in the last 3 months.

Key lime tree on C35 · More Info

Key lime tree on C35 · More Info

The smaller of the two trees was trimmed today, trying to keep it manageable.

Key lime tree on C35 · More Info

Evan

Evan, your trees are always spectacular! The buzz cut looks great ;-)

Just put the bubble cover on th greenhouse

6b Steve

Evan that is what a tree should look like,very pretty!

And that is why citrus trees belong in the ground and not in containers.

6b Steve

Here's a pic of my key lime tree. Just about ready to make some key lime pie

New Zealand lemonade tree on US897 has new growth.

6b Steve

I cut into my first Moro of the season.
A very small fruit, but perfect in flavor - truly the best orange I've had this year. Incredibly juicy, sweet without being too tart, and with that distinctive wineberry note. Color was decent, as well...

Josh

I'm loving those blood orange pictures, it's been so long. Great pics everybody!

Here is the Flame grapefruit (second crop) The one on the left I think/hope is only changing color and nothing is wrong with it. This year it was really hot and I guess it got some good growth from that. BTW the tree flowered in early July

Matt When you say it flowered in early July, is that in 2015 or 2016. I thought grapefruits take 14 to 18 months from flower to harvest.

6b Steve

Steve, I had the first fruit in Sept 2015 that I was able to pick. It took over a year for that one to mature. I got back from Israel last day of June 2016 and over the next 2 to 3 days as I looked over the plants I noticed flowers were forming. I am surprised with the amount of growth since then it's crazy!

Josh, any seeds? Hello by the way. Talk soon)