Ike

You have enough trees unless you are missing a Meiwa kumquat. It takes me about a day to build my enclosures and about 3 hours to disassemble. They get built in fall and disassembled in spring. It is a lot of work. I used a 72 watt halogen bulb for my Fukushu and a Pelonis heater for my New Zealand lemonade tree. You could cut the Meyer down and replace with 8 more non-Meyers and cut down on the amount of time spent on your trees

Steve

You have too many when you become disillusioned with the hobby because it's too much work. I have 20 in containers and more than once I asked myself if I have gone over board. That question only comes up when I have to move them inside. lol.

I have about 55 trees and 35 varieties. Now, I only want a few trees that are on my wish list that are hard to find. I have a number of duplicate trees that I should get rid of but somehow can't bring myself to throwing them on the compost pile.

My list is too big

Meiwa on kuharski

5 seed grown Meiwa

Fukushu on C35

seed grown Fukushu in ground

New Zealand lemonade on C35 in ground

New Zealand lemonade on US897

6 out of 11 in ground Hardy Chicago Kumquat trees survived last winter.

Steve

The reason to grow Cara Cara orange is simply that it is the best orange I have ever eaten; between my house and my farms and other gardens I have about a dozen. The Meyer is really a teddy bear in the ground; the common answer to problems is simply lack of food; they are very heavy feeders. If you have grass under your Meyer, you have to feed it even more; because the grass steals the food.

Of course it is a matter of taste. For me, Cara Cara are OK. Mandarins are better.

I think you’ve answered your own question. You have enough. HST, nobody ever tell me I have enough shoes!

Imelda told me the same thing on shoes

Vladimir - if you ever decide to ‘thin the herd’, please do not throw them in the compost pile! I’ll drove to MA and pick them up myself. I don’t know how you can manage 55 trees...

PS: I agree, mandarins are the best

Alana, I will definitely let you know when the time comes to "thin the herd". You need to know that many are seedlings 2 or less years old.

Where do you live?

Wow, you must have the addiction as bad as I have.

I would say you have enough when you read this forum and don't come away thinking I really should get that, and that, and that....

KC

Vlad,

I only said and I believe Cara Cara to be the best orange on the planet; if you prefer mandarins, it is apples and oranges.

John, I stand corrected.

Steve, yes I am still missing kumquats, which I keep strongly considering planting, but don't generally consider them to munch when thinking about maintenance, upkeep, and effort to cover during hard freezes since they are generally consider as cold hardy as Owari Satsuma, though some data suggest otherwise see http://www.walterreeves.com/uploads/pdf/coldcitrus.pdf . Much the same goes when I consider adding Orange Frost or Arctic Frost (which should become available in Louisiana in the next year or so), as those I see mainly as backups in case of a devastating all time record freeze (current all time record is 13F set in the early 1940's, during a 10 year period that had multiple historic freezes which wiped out the citrus industry on the upper gulf coast, for the half century prior to those freezes there were tens of thousands of acres of citrus grown on the upper gulf coast, today commercial groves are generally limited to a few isolated coastal areas). One of the multi hundred acre Satsuma groves that was wiped out in this period was only about 5 miles south of my house.

Kumquats have problems on sour orange that usually lead to death. Their mistake in their rootstock choice. All the kumquats and hybrids need to be grafted to Poncirus Trifoliata or Flying dragon. They would have all survived. The others belonged on sour orange or PT/FD

I agree that root stock may have been a major factor, as to appropriate choice of root stock, I can tell you that Saxon Becnel a major citrus growing nursery with 2 locations, here in Louisiana and just across the state line in SE Texas ( where we typically have sand loam soil with a slightly acidic pH (mine runs about 5.7 -5.8) is now using C-22 for their preferred root stock for all limes and kumquats.

We have really gotten off topic. lol.

I think that is because we can;t deal with the pain of owning too many citrus trees.