Meiwa to Poncirus several 4 grafts to be made. At the end of the year the grafts will either be successful, or the kumquats will take off on their own roots, or the trees will face winter UNPROTECTED OUTSIDE. I am going to go with the Meyer lemons I received as gifts. They are looking very nice now. Steve

Just wanted to post a followup on this for anyone who may come across this thread in the future. I always hate finding a thread full of good information, but then not knowing if it actually worked or not. I replaced the trees that died, and the new ones are doing great. Here's what I did differently. (I know that for some of you, these may be the most obvious things in the world, but some of us are still learning, even from our really stupid, obvious mistakes). - I waited til it cooled down. It got cooler earlier than I expected, so I was able to do the transplants a couple weeks ago. - Smaller trees. I did still really need the height, so I went with 6-8' tall trees (some are about 9', actually), but I got much smaller caliper (trunk diameter) trees. I tried for no more than about 1.5" caliper, measured 6 inches above the root flare (some are a little closer to 1.75"). They're definitely much less full, but they'll get the job done until they fill in and grow up a little. It helps a lot that I found out that for screening purposes, eastern red cedars can be planted as close as 4' apart. Bigger, fuller trees really aren't needed at that spacing. - No starter fertilizer. These are trees, not grass. I used some Fertilome Root Stimulator & Starter solution (per the manufacturer's instructions) when I planted, and may add some Superthrive in a couple weeks, just to get the roots really going before winter kicks in. - Much better care of the root balls. I didn't make perfect root balls, as such - after reading a whole lot of back and forth between scientists on the benefits of good root balls vs taking as much root as possible, even if they're outside of the dirt, I kind of went with a hybrid approach. I got as much root as I could, and kept as much dirt on them as possible. I kept all of them covered with dirt of some type for as much time as possible, and ensured that they never actually got dry. Total time from digging to planting was less than 4 hours, and most of that time, they were in some kind of dirt. - I watered with a sprinkler for a few days, to let moisture come in through both the roots & leaves, in case the roots were having difficulty of some kind. Then I found out about Wilt-Pruf (prevents moisture from escaping through the leaves, which causes a lot of transplant shock). I applied it per the manufacturer's instructions, and am now watering with a soaker hose, as Wilt-Pruf should also prevent absorption of water through the leaves. - I haven't mulched yet (life got in the way unexpectedly), but I will be soon. Something else I came across in my reading - mulch isn't required, but most bushes or trees that are mulched in their first year or two after transplant show 20%+ more growth than those that aren't. Since growth & size are my primary goals here, it's worth having that junk in my yard for a year or two. We'll see what, if anything, will grow under these trees once they're established, but for now, it's gonna be mulch. Thanks, everybody, for all the insights provided. Hopefully these results, and what I did to get them, will be useful to someone else in the future, too.

Good morning Dawn and everyone else! I haven't posted in awhile because I've been busy "pre-gardening". This weekend has been cold and rainy here in far NE OK although so far not too bad. I have been doing a bunch of "wintersowing" thanks to your tip, Dawn, several weeks ago. It really makes sense for some plants that require cold stratification, and I'm trying it for some others as well. So I have been busy acquiring milk jugs and baking my garden soil to use in them, since the expense of seed starting mix has overwhelmed the whole purpose of having a garden for me, which is economy. Well, that and taste. But anyway... I've been making seed tape of my lettuce, onion, and radish seed and I was going to put them in the ground this weekend but looks like I'll need to wait. I've been over on the seed trading gardenweb site and met a bunch of really nice people. Thanks to them and to the people over on the wintersowing site, I have lots of new seed to try this year. On the frugal gardening site, I learned how to make newspaper pots, and I think that's the best idea since sliced bread! And on the Garden Art site, I saw the coolest things. A teacup birdfeeder, a man and a dachshund made of clay flower pots, and bottle trees! I dragged an old artificial Christmas tree out of the attic, stripped it down to just the metal branches, then started picking up cobalt blue bottles from my job (one of the businesses is a recycling center -- we collect clear and brown glass, but people keep leaving green and blue, for which they don't have a market right now, and they have to dispose of them. (If you have a recycling center near you, just don't go and take things out of the bins -- ask first. Anything else is stealing, even if it IS just a blue wine bottle!) My bottle tree is coming along, I still don't have quite enough small blue bottles, but I add a few each week. AND THEN.... I got interested in heirloom beans. I have grown Lazy Wife snap beans for years and never knew they were "heirloom". I went to a gourmet site, bought one-pound bags of several kinds of interesting beans. I will have enough to plant and enough to sell for seed at my spring yard sale. At 30 beans in a bag for only fifty cents each, I can double the money I spent (if they all sell, which probably they won't, but then maybe I can use the extras to trade.) But even if I only sell some, I may still make my money back. The only thing is, the gourmet site sold the beans to eat, not to plant, so I had no information on growing habit (whether pole or bush, for instance). Some of the names of the beans were not found anywhere else on the Internet, but I went to the "Beans & Legumes" site and some of the regulars over there have been helping me identify the beans. It appears that many of the beans I bought as dry "gourmet" beans are most commonly used as snap beans! Leave it to those Gourmets... I'm just an old redneck woman and I look at my Lazy Wife dry beans as seed, not something I could put in a pot with a hambone and cook. So I'm getting my horizons broadened in lots of ways. I still have a few beans the "Bean Experts" didn't recognize, if anyone wants to give it a try I'll post a list. My Datura seeds, none of which came up at all last spring, germinated much sooner than I expected this year, after being sanded and soaked and set under a lightbulb in January. Out of the 15 I planted, I got 10 plants. I've repotted into foam 12-oz drink cups and they are all getting their 9th and 10th leaves, sitting under the fluorescent lights. The leaves and stems look so nice and healthy, I'm very proud of our accomplishment, Dawn! And my seed starting mat came, so I've replanted the pepper plants that didn't come up, and I'm getting some sporadic results. I'm thinking the purple pepper seed that I took from peppers that were given me last summer were just not mature enough, because they are the only ones that not one seed has germinated. The tomatoes that I planted in January are doing well under the fluorescent lights. I realize I planted too soon. Usually I plant them on the last weekend in January, they take a week or two to germinate, and by April 15 they are still somewhat small. So this year I decided I wanted bigger plants, but I overplanned. I used seed-starting mix, which the seeds loved, and set them under an incandescent light that provided heat, which the seeds also loved. Some of them were popping their heads out within a few days. Others took about a week. So that was a real jump-start and probably too much. Now I'm seeing some stress in a few of the plants, because I think I'm keeping them too wet so I'm going to let them dry out a bit and hope for the best! I've already repotted them once. And I've decided I do not like those little peat pots. The roots grow right through them and start drying out. The only advantage is that you don't have to remove the pot when you repot. So far my newspaper pots are not letting the roots grow through but they're just as easy to repot, plus the newspaper, when below ground level, will decompose and help retain moisture around the roots. All in all, if the weather cooperates and my back holds out, I should have a really interesting garden this year. Plenty for my "audience" that walks along the sidewalk outside my back fence to ask questions about and point out to their friends. I've met a lot of people in town this way. Since I work full time I don't get many chances to "neighbor". This year I'm going to try to plant more flowers, as attractants to lady bugs, and of course the butterflies and hummingbirds. And because the squirrels keep digging up the mammoth sunflower seed I plant, I've wintersown them this year so I can have more than just a few plants. I myself cannot see one benefit to having squirrels. DH and his family ate squirrel when he was a boy. They were poor sharecroppers and would've starved to death otherwise. Maybe that's one good use for a squirrel.

If the fruit is not quit ripe it will taste more like a lemon and you can make a kumquat meringue pie. Kumquats are so hard to grow because they do not go dormant and you are growing them in an area that is best suited for tree that sleep. Kumquat trees grow slowly so they have less vigor to battle what ails them and when they die back it take longer to regrow. Also you live so far north I am not sure the bottom half of the sun even come above the horizon. Best of luck to you