Mandarins make the best juice! Great harvest! You could always add a tad of Equal to your juice if you don't mind a sugar substitute.

John 9a,

Those Satsumas and the tree look so beautiful. A nice problem to have getting all those delicious fruit! Happy Thanksgiving.

Cory

Great shots!

Our local Mountain Mandarin Festival was this past weekend, and one of my favorites is the fresh juice and the mandarin cocktails they sell.

Josh

So beautiful John! What an incredible harvest! By the way, I have the same juicer ;-).

Dave, I want to find out what's happening to the fruit's sugar. Might be some enzymes at work since there surely can't be enough time or bacteria to take out the sugar after just one night in the 'fridge. I have noticed lemon juice also changes very quickly. It goes from bright and lemony to bland and watery.

Laura, I have put that juicer....well, I have put it through the wringer!

I hair have taken to thinning the fruit while still small. Gives you bigger and usually better tasting fruit.

Tim, I started thinning my fruit when they first began showing some yellow. Probably not what you mean but satsumas can be picked when the peel is still half green. it takes some load off the tree and you can eat some early ones in the name of thinning :>)

Navel's do that sour thing too. I think I heard it is some kind of enzyme. Valencia's don't do it; that's why they're so good for juicing. The juice will last for days in the fridge without getting sour or funky.

Barb...thanks...I googled the enzyme thing and here is what I dug up:

"Several times recently I have squeezed a large number of oranges, enjoyed some of the delicious fresh-squeezed juice, and then been disappointed by the rest the next day. It tastes bitter, and becomes worse rapidly. This turns out to be the result of naturally occurring limonoate A-ring lactone (aka "LARL," a tasteless substance) breaking down into limonin, which is very bitter tasting. The amount of LARL varies between oranges and throughout the growing season. If there’s any way to arrest the conversion of LARL to limonin in the home-squeezing process, I don’t know about it."

John is this an Owari satsuma?

Jpolk, yes, Owari. It's a really tasty orange. I'm finally getting some fruit from a Dancy tangerine. The tangerine is only in it's second season producing much fruit so it may get better but I would take the satsuma over the dancy for flavor any day.

At least limonin is good for you

John asks: "... any way to arrest the conversion of LARL to limonin in the home-squeezing process...".

Yes John, theoretically anyway, don't allow the juice to come in contact with oxygen. When limonin, which is a strong antioxidant found in citrus, comes in contact with oxygen the enzymes cause the juice to quickly turn bitter, most especially with Navel oranges, and least with Valencia. In Valencia oranges, limonin is not found in the juice sacks as in some citrus varieties, but rather it is found in the seeds, therefore Valencia juice remains fresh for extended periods of time..

Yes, pip, so I'm hoping for a common cold-free fall!

Thanks Silica. I tasted the juice a day after juicing and I would have said it wasn't as sweet but I wouldn't have said it had any bitterness....maybe the satsuma isn't as prone to bitter...just becomes a little more tart. The final end of the juice I squeezed was to be blended with some ponderosa lemon juice and I added some ginger ale. That was tasty!

Tangerine. lemon, and ginger ale, now that sounds like a good Christmas drink. I'll have to try it during this holiday season.

I don't know about oxygens effects. But raising the ph past 6.5 stops the conversion

John, wow, gorgeous!! The orange color is so brilliant, I love it!

Josh, the mandarin festival sounds great. My niece and I have a little inside joke that here in Hawaii, we find any reason for festivals (Spam, mango, avocado, rice, coffee, etc), but we don't certainly don't have a mandarin festival. I hope you ate and drank to your heart's content!

Beautiful harvest, John! May my daughter and I use the second picture for her upcoming project?

sunshine, sure, glad you thought the photo was worthy....but will you send me 10% if you make millions on it? :>)

pip....now that's good information on the pH. So all I have to do is add some bleach and it will stop converting to a bitter flavor! Really do appreciate that...just having some fun with the idea.

Id use calcium carbonate. But whatever floats your boat.

Haha.... John :) There are no financial gains from the project, it's just grade 4 health education presentation.

that's lovely! We always pick them green, mabey blushing...never gotten one to turn orange before bugs get it!

Renee, what kid of bugs are getting your satsumas?? I fight whiteflies, leaf miners, and scale but nothing that keeps me from getting fruit.

I have no idea, we just find big yucky spots on them. We moved just last month though, so will be starting anew with new trees next year!

Renee, good luck getting new trees started. I wouldn't be surprised if your yucky spots were a fungal infection. I had that trouble last year because it rained a lot when the fruit were nearly ripe...they just didn't stay dry long enough to keep from rotting on the tree. This year has been quite the opposite, quite dry, until recently.

Beautiful fruits. Look like ornaments in the tree in time for Christmas!

Satsuma mandarins are delicious. The flavor can be a little insipid the first and second years but the flavor continues to improve as the tree ages. Even after the tree is 12 years old, the flavor still slowly continues to improve. The fruit from a 20-25 year old tree, picked fresh right off the tree, is unbelievable. Satsuma mandarins are also mostly seedless. Maybe there will be 2 or 3 seeds in 1 out of 4 of the fruits. The rind is effortless to peel off. Unfortunately the fruits do not seem to retain their freshness very long after being picked from the tree, they taste best when eaten within the first 3 days.

The other good seedless mandarin is Kishu.

Some people call them tangerines, some people call them oranges, but I believe the best word to use is mandarin. Technically, Satsuma is not a tangerine.

Mandarins do not grow as big as orange trees either, they rarely get above 6 feet.

parker, thanks for the notes on satsumas. As per an earlier comment, I also have a dancy tangerine just beginning to fruit. Maybe it's not fair to compare flavors of young tangerine to a 9-year old satsuma but the satsumas are better this year. Hopefully the tangerine will flavor up some in the next few years.

You note the differences in satsuma's flavors as the tree gets older. I'll also note that the flavors during a single season are also quite variable, in a good way. You can pick and enjoy a satusuma when it's just beginning to yellow up some...but the peel is still half green. The fruit is a little more tart but already very juicy. Later, the fruit sweeten up and some of the fruit will be so sweet you wonder if you are getting too much sugar to be healthy :>) A part of me actually prefers the more tart version earlier in the season. Now my tree only has one or two small pickings left. Some are still very tasty but some are beginning to dry out some. I want to try some mandarin jam....hmmmm.

I had my first taste of a fruit from my owari satsuni and was very disappointed, I was a bit dry and it did not have a little of the sourness that I expected. It was kind of bland. From what you guys are saying, perhaps I picked it too late. (It was completely orange.) And the flavor will improve with age of the tree. (It is a 4 - 5 year tree.)

The climate can make a difference too. For example, in places with sunny hot summers, Valencia oranges taste wonderful, very flavorful and sweet, maybe the best tasting Orange variety there is, but in colder climates it's not such a good variety. I've read a little freezing cold weather can sweeten the fruits, but overall the fruits are not going to be as sweet if they do not get as much sun. Satsumas seem to ripen around early December and I would imagine cold air could dry them out. Most Satsuma mandarins you see being commercially sold are coming from trees 8 to 12 years old. By then they have developed good flavor, but the flavor will improve a little more when the trees have gotten a little older than that. If the flavor is not good at 4-5 years, that tells me it's probably a combination between lack of maturity and your climate. Also, try to withhold water right as the fruits are ripening.

Some regular Satsuma aficionados here! Thanks and just one note on the ripening time. That is also variable from region-to-region I suppose since my fruit usually ripens in early November. By December (now), I have just about finished harvesting Satsumas.

We had a satsuma mandarin at my house in Glendora, an eastern LA suburb, when I was growing up. It was several decades old. Our experience was that some years they were very very good and some years they were watery and bland. When I bought my first house I planted one and it was the same, variable taste from year to year. They must be very sensitive to the growing conditions that parker talks about.