As one of their past mail order citrus tree customers, I received this email from US Citrus:

"... I’m sorry to say that US Citrus will permanently stop selling citrus trees via our e-commerce platform.

Long story short, USDA has made it impossible to operate a certified citrus nursery in an area with ACP (Asian citrus psyllid). As many of you know, Hurricane Hanna hit our facilities on July 25. We had a breach at our nursery because of high winds, and we immediately repaired the damage. However for the last 3 months, despite numerous appeals and inspections, USDA APHIS/PPQ has determined that because we had this one-time breach, our entire nursery stock has been made ineligible for shipments. This is despite numerous inspections that show no evidence of ACP in our nursery and our trees being perfectly healthy.

This is the third time we have had an issue with USDA over the past 24 months. Their regulations are not based on science but on short-sighted dogma. Starting and stopping an e-commerce company that already has a short selling season is difficult. The market is competitive and we had made significant investments in marketing, product development, packaging and shipping, and customer service over the past 4 years of our business life. It has been 3 months of an extremely stressful time that has decreased our cash flows to nearly zero. We will still sell trees locally (for the Rio Grande Valley only, and it is illegal to transport this outside of the quarantine region - aka South Texas). We will still be offering support for questions relating to your citrus trees that you have purchased, and feel free to continue to email us for support.

However, we are not closing our operations. We started this company to get the best citrus fruit into the hands of the American consumer. Our tree sales started because people were asking for this.

We operate solely from South Texas, and we are the only company offering high-quality Persian lime fruit in the US. We also have a variety of grapefruit, lemons, oranges, and mandarin offerings, as well as some specialty varieties.

We love eating and juicing citrus fruit straight off the tree. There is something wonderfully refreshing and delicious in enjoying seasonal citrus offerings, and these have given us very pleasant memories throughout the decades.

We wanted to share this special memory of enjoying fresh citrus fruit, so we launched the Craft Citrus Club. It is a subscription box program of 10-lb of citrus fruit in every box! We curate the varieties for you based on seasonality. This means we will choose what fruit goes into every box that you get, making sure it is only the freshest and tastiest!

We thank you, our loyal followers and customers, for your support. If you would like to continue supporting US Citrus and you like the idea of knowing where your food comes from, then please sign up for the Craft Citrus Club!

You can choose intervals of shipments from 2-8 weeks, and the fruit is good for up to 4 wks in a refrigerator.

We are refocusing and refreshing our brand. And we have a few more surprises waiting for you!

Best citrus wishes,

Ron"

Too bad, as they sold good quality trees via mail order.

Ken