We love this time of year, when most of our citrus is in full fruit. In spite of the devastating greening disease that is such an effective citrus tree killer in Florida, we continue to grow citrus - it’s just too easy, aside from the greening, and rewarding.
We’ve lost some trees to greening, but we just plant more. We focus on the type of citrus you can’t find in the grocery store or at your local farmer’s market; exotic, delicious and prolific trees.
Kumquat
Our sand hill gets colder than most places that grow citrus in Florida, thus we have to have cold tolerant varieties. The varieties we have chosen will survive at 22F or even colder, especially if protected. We recently had four nights of frost with our trees in full fruit and they loved it. In fact, the light frosts tend to just make the fruit sweeter.
Here are some of our favorite varieties:
This compact, prolific tree is tolerant of frosts, heat, humidity and drought. It does well in sandy soils and is pest resistant. The fruits look like small oranges but inside is a unique flavor burst - a cross between an orange and a lime. This complex flavor tastes fabulous in cooked dishes, over fish, chicken or veggies, in salads, or “limeade” type drinks or smoothies.
We love to squeeze it into green tea or fruity teas.
We’ve planted our tree under a large laurel oak, where it has thrived even when neglected for many months at a time. We can’t recommend this tree enough, a favorite of ours and of guests alike.
This fruit is the delight of every kid who has grabbed one. When kids are around, or adults with their kid-spirit alive and well, we can’t keep them on the tree. These are small round or oblong fruits that can be popped in the mouth and eaten whole.
Meiwa kumquat is a rounded fruit and has a slightly tart skin and sweet juice inside. Together, they make a delicious combination that is irresistible. It’s the most popular type of kumquat in many parts of Asia.
Meiwa kumquat
Nagami kumquat is oblong, with a sweet skin and tart fruit. Both do well in the cold and are drought and heat tolerant as well. We’ve planted these under live oaks where they’re thriving.
Nagami kumquat
Similar to a kumquat, these fruits are very tart and sour, and make some of the best marmalade we’ve ever tasted. Can be used as a lemon-lime substitute. Some people love to eat them like kumquats though they’re a little sour for us. We prefer marmalade!
Calamondin trees easily self seed and are very low care.
This tree would look wonderful in a Japanese garden with its gently weeping branches. This is one of the more cold tolerant citrus varieties, surviving in parts of North Florida and South Georgia and being able to withstand brief forays around 15F. It does tend to be susceptible to greening and we already lost one Satsuma to this disease. But there is a new variety of this tree, called Owari, that is more resistant. We’ve just purchased one of these varieties, to supplement or replace our current Satsuma, which is doing great so far and may or may not succumb to greening.
These fruits are super easy to peel, the peel almost falls off on its own. And it is some of the best tasting citrus we’ve ever had, very similar to tangerines with just the right combination of sweet and tart.
All of these citrus varieties are smaller trees and can thrive in pots.
Owari Satsuma (photo from trees.com)
To grow citrus in pots, which we’ve done at various times, use as large a pot as you can handle, and feed it regularly. Every 3-4 years (depending on the size of the pot), remove it from the pot, shake the soil off, trim the roots, and replace the soil with fertile, rich compost. Feed the tree regularly with a good organic fertilizer or manure, apply oak leaf compost tea, and mulch with oak leaves and you should continue to get high yields from your potted citrus for many years. Meyer lemons and most limes also do well in pots. This is one way to have less cold tolerant citrus such as key lime, in colder climates if you protect them during freezes.
This disease is devastating Florida citrus groves, and many people are looking for solutions, including vaccines, pest predators, greening resistant varieties and more.
One of the most effective natural solutions we’ve found is to plant citrus under oak, and generously place oak logs and leaves around the tree every year. There is an “X” factor in oak trees that help citrus to fight off the greening. This was first observed by permaculturists who noted wild citrus growing in oak hammocks without greening. The benefit of oaks was later documented by the University of Florida.
Greening can take several years to kill a tree. It attacks the roots and eventually cuts off circulation. Leaves will start to discolor unevenly.
Leaves discolored from greening https://www.citrusalert.com/about-citrus-greening/
Fruit will start being partially green, and soon, will dry out and remain hard, discolored balls. Though nurseries in Florida are required to use pesticides to kill the (foreign) gnat that spreads this disease, we’ve ended up with citrus trees that brought it in, or the gnats came from somewhere else. In any case, it’s on our land.
So we plant all of our citrus under oak (it’s one of the few fruit trees that fruit well in shade - even deeper shade), and feed it oak compost teas (soak oak leaves for a week or two in a bucket of water, and pour the mixture on the soil around the tree), oak leaves and oak wood chips or logs regularly. We keep the trees well fed during the growing season with rich compost and/or manure, but stop feeding around Sept or Oct every year to let it rest while it fruits. Btw, oaks are beneficial for many of our fruit trees and hundreds of other living things; we highly recommend hosting live oaks wherever possible on your land.
We cherish our citrus trees for many reasons. The flowers smell heavenly, the tree is a host plant for swallowtail butterflies, and it’s a beautiful evergreen in the landscape with fruit providing color in the season where everything else on our sand hill is turning brown.
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