For me If I can buy it from the grocery store I am not going to grow it my self. Fruit not available or unavailable price wise I will grow at home. Organic blueberries $6 a pound on sale. I have 8 plants. I am not to worried about taste between specific cultivars of the same fruit. I generally stick to citrus on the citrus forum.

Steve

As I see it taste varies with growing conditions, I have 3 mature Satsuma trees (at least 2 different varieties), and 4 more that have been in ground 1 to 3 years, along with a Meyers Lemon and a Cara Cara Orange. It seems each year a different one of my mature Satsuma trees has the best tasting fruit, best fruit size, and yield. All of which I tend to attribute the the weather in a given year.

I also have a variety of non-citrus fruit, again here diversity increases odds of a good crop as I live in a location with highly variable chill hours (ranging from 400-1,300 over the last 20 years, with the average being around 590), as well as reasonable chances for a late season freeze in April about half the time. This includes 12 varieties of blueberries (mostly 1 bush of each, though I do have 2 Sweet Crisps, and 4 Pink Lemonades), 5 varieties of thornless blackberries / raspberry, and 8 varieties of stone fruit, and 5 varieties of pear, etc.

I have about 15 trees now, 10 of them are different varieties of lemon - a few I can easily find and the others are precious, hard to find Italian vatieties. I use lemons a lot with cooking and the ones in the grocery store (specifically from Chile/Peru) are nearly bland. I’m essentially looking for the best tasting lemon I can grow :)

Kelly, you got it. Once you got to know all those different varieties, you be great on this forum, that's how forums grow.

Sorry, you are already great, caught a mistake!

I definitely have some varieties that I don’t need. The bouquet de fleurs is one example. I also can’t say I love the taste of either the oroblanco or cocktail grapefruit. I probably have too many lemons, but I like those. I also could lose the limequats. The key lime trees are bigger and more productive. I think I’m going to relocate a few more next year.

For me living on the 8b/9a line and growing in ground my great debate is between cold hardness vs. how much I want to deal with sheltering and freeze protection as well as level of risk I am willing to take. So some types of citrus that I like don't get planted in favor of ones that are easier to grow here, which are mostly varieties of Satsuma, the varieties I have added the last few years are all early varieties in order to spread out harvest dates.

I would like to see people with a heavy knowledge of plant diseases, pruning styles, leaf analyses and lastly moon phases for planting purposes.

For me, when a leaf turn yellow it is ready to fall off. There are also different ways for Foliar sprays to benefit plant and fruits.

Most members are happy with the forum the way it is, just a reminder, you are not even close as to what you should know. There is a ton of good stuff out there, just let your fingers do the

guiding.

Reading other people's comments, and having tasted many varieties myself, and comparing the two, I've come to realize there's a huge amount of personal preference involved in citrus tasting.

Also, fruits picked from your own tree (especially if it's an older tree, that has had time to develop flavor) are a whole lot fresher and can taste a lot better than if you buy those same varieties at a supermarket.

Citrus grown in the ground has a big advantage over container culture. For instance too much watering, too much fertizing, not enough fertilizing, wrong kind of fertilizer and a few others. One of the biggest problem with fertilizing is this term,” feast or famine”. You need an constant supply, no breaks. The next big problem is, when a plant starve for moisture the root hairs are the first to dry out and they are the ones to bring up moisture, thus the plant has to make new root hairs therefore the plant stalls in growth. Slightly underfertilizing is better than overfertilizing, furthermore, roothairs do "not" like strong fertilizing with gobs of watering.

Tree,s grown in the ground has a big advantage, so a tree growing in a container has to have more care to come close in taste.

consistancy is the key. When you pot-up your next tree and use a saucer for overflow, you can drill a small hole in the bottom of your pot and run a string of a mob head through and circle the extra towards the top of soil.I use this stuff.

.

Bob You said it all.

Fukushu kumquat#2 · More Info

New Zealand lemonade#1 · More Info