Early ripening, cold hardy citrus
Hello all
I've been fiddling around with citrus the last couple of years, that I could get decent fruit off of, growing outside, passively. No greenhouses or electric assist, taking them indoors, etc. I've had a few problems ( such as moles) which have made it difficult to verify, but I'm getting a clearer idea of good varieties.
Fresh eating is good, but I also value sour mixing juice for such things as alcohol. I've also had success using sour fleshed fruit candied with granulated sugar for kids.
I think I'm in zone eight or nine-ish. We have hot humid summers, with a longish winter where we get a bit of snow. I find most of my citrus do pretty well until mid February. We get a few overcast days in a row, and my theory is that the sun can't heat the ground up enough to get them through the nights. That's when most of the leaves will drop off the tree, of course that stunts it for the following season.
I've been experimenting a bit with breathable fabric covers, and water tanks next to the trees when possible. But the trees a list here have been able to make it through the snow without. They also all start to ripen in September/October, well before our first frosts which will damage the fruit quality.
Anyway, my top producers do far:
Mikan ( Will try to find the variety names, as there are many): late October thin skinned variety; This is the only real eating citrus I've had success with. It's actually the first one to ripen enough to use for juice this year in august. Very good tree, the only one that lost almost no leaves all winter uncovered. Here's an August picture:
Early October thick skinned variety;
Shikwasa: Hands-down my favorite. Very juiceytropical tasting with a hint of salt.
Yuzu: very stout, perhaps most cold/pest resistant.fruit make good sour juice if picked green.
Sudachi: very good lemon like sour juice, but notabundant producer for me so far.
Kabos: very large beautiful juicy fruit with goodaroma, good producer, but I find it too mild for mixer, and not sweet enough for fresh eating.
Those are my favorite so far that I've had success with. I have a few more varieties that havent produced yet, and a few that were washouts for me for various reasons.
Eureka lemon: babied with a black 150 gallon water tank for passive warmth. Very pest sensitive, very few lemons, and they take a long time to ripen.
Mikan (Nastu): Very thick skin with the Dry woody fruit. I don't know why people even bother to grow them.
Navel orange: Even worse than the Eureka lemon. Severe winter dieback to stalk.
Kinkan (kumquat): extremely cold/pest hardy, very big producer, but it flowers so late (last month) none of the fruit get past green before frost.
Meyer lemon: Difficult to find locally, but I got one this summer in a pot and it’s just budding up with a lot of flowers now. No idea if it can handle being planted in ground with my other trees. I did notice it got a lot of insect damage though during the summer, despite being in an ideal location.
Comments (25)
Laura LaRosa (7b)
6 years ago
Sammers510
6 years agoRelated Discussions
The truth about cold hardy citrus taste?
Comments (25)Although I really don't have great credentials or special taste buds, consider this for your citrus craving/growing............Thomasville Citrangequat- I have 2 trees that are 10+ years old. I don't use the green fruit, but the mature yellow/orange fruit are pleasant to eat freah. They are a lot milder than grapefuit, not leaving the sour aftertaste. They are mildly sweet with enough acid. I think of them like eating a semi-sweet, orange-flavored lemon. Nothing like clarity. The trees are productive ,grow in clay, are nourished by mulch only, and have stiff 2" thorns that are a terror. I clip them off. The mature fruit will eventually become dehydrated if they hang around too many weeks. If you eat grapefruit, these won't be a challenge to eat. There is no funky component to the flavor.Because they produce a lot of fruit that don't get eaten, I grafted Brown Select satsuma and Hamlin orange buds/scions to several of the branches at a height of about 7 feet in 2009. I heard a local speaker declare that there is a theory that grafting high on a citrus trunk can provide a greater cold tolerance to the grafted branches. Well, these 8 month old new shoots were exposed to a January 2010 short-lived low temp of 14 degrees....and neither tree had any windbreak, plastic, mulch/dirt mound, gloves, or long johns. Results? One of 5 Brown Select branches died, and both Hamlin branches survived. That is plenty cold hardy enough for me to believe the 'theory'.(Side note: I also topworked 2 old sour orange tree branches at about 7 ft with BC2 satsuma and Brown Select satsuma in 2009.....all 10 Brown s. survived and 7 of 10 BC2 survived.)I imagine that with your protection strategy that the T.C. could be a survivor/producer. Maybe it would serve as a r/s also......If you enjoy lemons, then maybe a Sunquat could be considered. My 4 year old Sunquat has lemon-like fruit that average 2" to 2-1/2" diameter, and mulch is the only source of nutrients. It is in a mound of sandy soil and got no protection in that 14 degree thing. It defoliated about 15% of the leaves, and several thin newer twigs died, but that was all. Importantly, it produced a full load of fruit following the freeze. It is mild enough to eat as a lemon, and it doesn't have a funky taste component. The peel is edible, but not as tasty as kumquat peel to me. It is about 6 ft tall and wide. I saw one that was about 12 feet tall and full of fruit, but this one tends to do more branch-flopping than growing upright. There are 3 Meiwa kumquats here that are 10 years old, and they had 10% defoliation only.They produced a lot after. There is a 10+ year old Calamondin also, and it dropped 30%.It produced a lot after. The 10+ year old Armstrong satsuma lost 10%, as well as a few twigs.It had 60% fewer fruit after. The 3- 10+ year old Bloomsweet grapefruit lost 20% to 40% of the leaves, depending on which tree, and still fruited big time.If you have not eaten a Sunquat before, I would mail a couple to you. It tastes a lot like the Meyer 50% parent, but slightly better..........For those with the climate, etc. to grow the superior fruit, these may not be praiseworthy, but...they do have their place.Although not to be confused with ribeye steak,....they are a LOT better than canned Vienna sausage...See MoreI'm breeding new cold-hardy citrus varieties for zone 8
Comments (154)Herman, thanks for the update. It’s great to see fruit already. How large are the Conestoga 026 Segentrange and Poncirus Plus fruit? They look similar to PT…….or are they larger…….photos can be hard to judge. Great to hear 5* Citrumelo has some sweetness. Fruit ripens around Thanksgiving……but the size is clearly larger than PT…….a nice selection. Getting fruit in 3 years is very fast. I gave my brother who lives in Fairfax, VA a seed grown Citrumelo 12 years ago and it still hasn’t bloomed! Keep the updates coming....See MoreNatsu Mikan - cold hardy mid winter harvest
Comments (6)I just found another very promising fruit. My wife purchased some from the local farmers market and they are grown very nearby. They ripen now, and they are very good oranges, even the kids like them, which is the acid test . They're called “Sweetspring” and they are a cross between a mikan and a hasaku. I just picked a tree up today, and I may go get another one. I’ll have to wait until next year to let you know how frost hearty they are, but if they’re selling them at the local farmers market they must be pretty good....See MoreCold hardy citrus update in Washington State
Comments (10)The forecast said the coldest it got down to was 12, but the coldest temperature I measured, just four hours before the forecast said it was supposed to drop down to that low point, was 22. I also did measurements before three different times, on cold winter nights, and the yard was 2 degrees above what the forecast said it was. So I can only assume that it probably actually got down to 14. Most years it only gets down to 15 at the lowest, and that's usually only 2 nights out of the entire winter. Olympia does get just a little colder than Seattle. The Satsuma here (on trifoliate rootstock) that was covered did not survive. There were 3 gallon water containers in there to try to keep the temperatures from going below freezing, and it was planted in a warm sunny spot. (but it was the standard Satsuma variety) The water containers never froze, even on the coldest night, and I actually filled them up with hot water a few hours just before it was supposed to drop to 12, just to try to help out in any additional way possible. It wasn't enough, but this was a colder Winter than usual....See More
theniceguy
6 years agoLaura LaRosa (7b)
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Susanne Michigan Zone 5/6
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theniceguyOriginal Author