There are so many good mandarin varieties, but Xie Shan is the best of the best.

What make Zie Shan the best.

Silica, How so? better taste? better growth? better yield? earlier bloom? larger fruit? I don't think I have heard much about Xie Shan.

Xie Shan has won more citrus taste contest then any other mandarin.

Bonnie, do you like your mandarin more on the sweet side or sour side? I like mine more on the sweet side but with a little but of acid so my favorite one is shiranui (sumo). Xie Shan is my second favorite.

Bunches of forum members has written their opinions, I took the bait, now I grow the finest in citrus the hard way. Now I can sort out the ones I want to keep. What I like might not be your choice. For one Lee/Nova is high on my list. My wife likes super sweets, I don’t, so what, well I grow. a bunch of super sweets. On the other hand if you have knowledgeable citrus members that can send you sions in exchange that helps a lot.

I would try one of the more easier varieties to locate such as Okitsu Satsuma or a Gold Nugget . If you have both of them is gives you ripe delicious from November- June.

Saying that if you can locate Xie Shan or Dekopon by all means pick one of those varieties.

BTW- best tasting is subjective since some like more sweetness and others prefer more acid/tart in their citrus or a combination of the two where some like one side of that scale over the other while others a balance of the two.

Thanks everyone for the input. I do like a sweeter one. I sometimes read everyone's other threads and wonder, where on earth do you find these plants? Some, I am just not willing to pay that much for. (This is just a hobby, after all!). Please forgive that comment, some take their hobbies very seriously. But it is just that for me. I like to grow unusual plants, (plants my neighbors and friends have never heard of! Lol!) And I like to push the zone a bit. But, my hubby frowns on me splurging an $100 on a plant. (Well, at least since I had to stop working.)

Last year the local big box store, had Page mandarins just under $40, for 3 gallon size. Which is not bad, but I decided his frown would get worse if I stuck one in the basket, LOL! The sacrifices we make for love! LOL!!!

I now grow about 40 citrus trees, out of that I only bought 3 trees from Harris nursery, the rest all from sion exchanges. 2 $5.oo Walmart specials, and one from Lowe,s $ 1.00.

The $1.00 from Lowe is now 11 years old, my first citrus tree, a Page. Been eating citrus for several years. Talking about cheap hobby. Had 2 glasses of orange juice this morning, plus just finished a Pomelo after lunch.

Redneck Girl if you like sweeter then go with a gold nugget or a dekopon if you can find one. I prefer sweeter as well with a hint of acidity.

Bob, I frequent the Lowe's plant mark-down racks regularly. Nice to know I'm not the only one! Somehow I missed the citrus clearance this last year, tho' a friend said she saw that they had marked them half off. I now have 18 and had to order most of them. Sometimes the shipping cost as much as the plant. So, now, I need to refine my collection. Lol! Been debating on cutting the clementine for a couple years now, and replacing it with something with a better taste, (hence this thread). If I were a better grafter, I might consider grafting something else to it, but unfortunately, I'm not that good a grafter. (I am trying, tho' not with a tree of the clementines size).

Grafting secret. scrub your hands and under your fingernail with a tooth brush. then clean with alcohol to de-germ/de-oil your hands. Follow YouTube instruction to T-Budding Use your finger nails to lift the bark instead of a tool.

The tree now

Steve

I have been jump at on this forum for buying Walmart end of the year sales. When you grow a lot of trees and you want maintain it as a hobby, you have to be a smart buyer.

I enjoy the way I do my thing, I have given a lot of stuff out, every year, usely the end of January, when I do sions. I have done my share Of given.

Steve, I have watched the videos but, (this is my excuse and I sticking to it) my eyes are so bad and I have arthritis in both hands, so not real steady. And it always seems I need three hands. Lol!

Bob, I would rather save a bargain plant than spend $$ on something I might kill. So you are in good company!

Thanks, one for me.

Well said Dave. I'm looking forward to my Xie San its 2 years from fruiting as its a small young tree. This year out of my 3 fruiting satsumas we all liked the Okitsu over the owari and miyagawa. This was the 1st year fruiting of the miya so I know it will get much better over time.

I think everyone should have a gold nugget and a dekopon. My deko is also in its 1st season fruiting with 4 I will be tasting in February.

Also this year I will be trying out my Shasta Gold for the first time as it has fruit and compare it with my Tahoe which has been producing for several years. This year my Yosemite will bear fruit so next season I will be able to compare all of them together. They say from what I've read that the Tahoe is the least favorite of the 3 but I think its delicious. So I'm really excited to try the others in the gold series.

Dave, I know what you mean about each year's fruit being different. The first few years that I got fruit from my Clementine, it was nasty. Thready and bland, not worth growing. But I held on to it because it is a pretty tree. This year, on the other hand, the fruit were nice. Still not great but a great deal better than previous years. I could eat them straight from the tree, where as before the only thing to do was juice them, but once juiced were a decent juice. The fruit just wasn't, because of it's texture, edible. (At least to me).

Last year I got a single fruit from the New Zealand lemonade. Not what I was expecting, per reviews I had read. Insipid, no real lemon taste. Just not something to brag about. But I've decided to give it a few years to see if it develops into something better. This year it again only produced a single fruit and it is still as green as can be, so we'll see...

The big box store (Lowe's) had Page and Miho last year, but I passed them up. We'll see what they come up with this year. Maybe I can save some of my Christmas gift card to splurge on one. LOL!

I did see that Harris had Xie Shan. And they can now ship out of state. So that maybe the way I go. Haven't made up my mind just yet.

Thanks again for everyone's input,

Bonnie

If you can get one or all three Gold Series mandarins, you better get them. Some of them are close to 5” across. A bunch of big ones per tree makes me very happy.

So, if you like big mandarins that taste pretty darn good, you be glad you have them in your collection.

Bob my tahoe this year has huge fruit but the reason I thought was because it thinned itself out this year and I only had 8 fruit compared to 30-40 which had been the norm for that tree. They are as big as my dekopon this year. I will take a pick of them side by side when I eat them in February.

Nick, with any fruits they get bigger if you thin them, but also, if you thin the tree it might produce a yield every year. The Gold Series are bi annual as I understand. With my situation, they are bi annual but they might produce a very few in their of year.

Satsuma (if they come from an old tree), Kishu, Shasta Gold, Minneola tangelo, and Page, in that order. (Satsuma picked from a younger tree can be really bland/watery, so can be very variable in flavor)

If you prefer conventional type of mandarin flavor, Nova Lee is pretty good, and an improvement on both of its parents. Dekopon is pretty good to snack on, and very sweet, but for me personally is just a little too rich, very slight mango flavor, it seems to me.

In terms of different types of flavors, I would put Satsuma and Kishu into the same group. Minneola tangelo and Page into the same group, Shasta Gold and Dekopon are probably more similar to each other in flavor type than to the others, and lastly Nova Lee would be in the flavor type of most standard normal mandarin varieties.

Xie Shan is a type of Satsuma, which is supposed to have just a little bit more sourness and flavor level than standard Satsuma, but the difference in taste is probably not too big. All varieties of Satsuma taste very similar.

Dekopon, Shiranui, and Sumo are just different names for the same variety.

And I might be wrong on this here, but I believe Pixie is just a different name for Kishu.

socalinolympia, as you suggest above, you are wrong.

yes pixie is not kishu