Get an orange frost or Arctic frost and make sure it is grafted on Poncirus trifoliata or its brother Flying dragon. The fruit will ripen before zone 7 first frost and will give you better fruit

Is there a nursery you can recommend for those? Most of the online nurseries I can find with those varieties are located in Texas and are unable to ship to NJ.

You might also consider Miho as an early ripening Satsuma Mandarin, which naturally tends to grow as a smaller tree than most other Satsumas.

I had my first kishus this year and was not really impressed by the flavor. They were dry and didn’t have the right balance of sweet/acid that I like in mandarin. Maybe, they will improve with times. I also got my first dekopon this year and I loved it! I thought that they will be bland like the kishu because i was the first fruit from my tree but the taste was amazing! if space is limited, I will suggest you to wait for dekopon. If you still want to have a mandarin this year then maybe I will think about getting a shasta gold. Brian has one and they look very good!

any Satsuma -- Owari, Xie Shan, Miho. Satsumas normally ripen in late fall/early winter, so you'd be able to leave it outdoors while fruit ripens most likely. Maybe pulling it in toward the end and letting the last fruit ripen inside.

I have Shiranui, but it has not flowered yet. It ripens in January or so. Although, your mileage may vary.

You don't say how you winter these over. Indoors, but where indoors and at what temp and light levels?

Brite leaf citrus

harris citrus

mckenzie farms

I'd recommend the Kishu, great container tree, spit for the extra cash and get a premium 4 winds tree, my one green world took to long to grow up, still spindly, but fruit was juicy and tangeriney

Satsuma, Kishu, Shasta Gold, Page mandarin

do your research about each variety first

http://www.lochlaurelnursery.com/citrus.asp This nursery sells plants at the Southeastern Citrus Expo so they are reputable. I have never ordered from them, but if this group uses them, then they are good enough for me.

Very easy to find one, Dekopon is probably the most favorite among the big variety of mandarins, on the other hand so much to choose from that are excellent. I you have to buy one now there might not be much to chose from. Trees might be pick over.

Dekopon is too sweet and rich (almost mango-like) for my personal preferences.

Would make a good snack in a paper bag lunch, but I'm not a huge fan.

It's so funny how one person likes something and another dislikes it. LOL! To me a perfectly ripened Shiranui (Depopan/Sumo) is just about the best piece of citrus fruit available in the market now (although Sky Valley Navels are super good too!). Easy to peel, complex taste -- somewhat between a mandarin and a really good orange, sweet with a bit of tart, really great pulp texture somewhat similar to a grapefruit with vessicles that just explode in your mouth, and when you peel it, it doesn't leak all over the place -- you can even eat it in the car (But don't eat and drive!). Also, nice and big, so you can make a decent meal of it -- the total package.

It might be more difficult to grow in a container in the north than say, a satsuma, but some have had success. Maybe there's a reason the Japanese charge $10 per fruit?

Dave, a good description, a very good reply, no smoke.

No smoke? Not sure what that means.

Disregard that, an old time saying.

Bob I'm old enough to know that saying

Steve, am I in trouble again?

No Your fine

Dekopon is my favorite mandarin that I've tasted so far. They're only available in the grocery stores here for a very short time, so I always end up spending far too much money buying as many as I can when they're in season. I'd love to grow them, but I'm sure about how well they'd do in a container since I don't see much info online about growing them as indoor/outdoor trees. In all fairness, though, I've only ever found gold nuggets in the store once, and I'm pretty sure they were picked too early, and I've never seen kishu mandarins anywhere, so I don't have much of a basis for comparison.

I couldn't get the kishu out of my head. Every time I pulled up the Internet, I found myself either looking up more info about growing them in containers or going back to Four Winds' website and adding it to/removing it from my cart, so I pulled the trigger and ordered a premium sized tree. They're currently unable to ship it due to the heatwave, but hopefully it will arrive in a couple weeks. Maybe in the future I'll look into adding a dekopon to my collection.