Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Early April citrus tasting

This is citrus tasting post #5 of the season.  The earlier ones are here:
http://fruitsandgardening.blogspot.com/2018/02/mid-february-citrus.html
https://fruitsandgardening.blogspot.com/2018/01/late-january-citrus.html
https://fruitsandgardening.blogspot.com/2017/12/late-december-citrus.html
https://fruitsandgardening.blogspot.com/2017/12/mid-december-citrus.html

From Mid March to early April I had only seven varieties still fruiting, the images and tasting are from April 3, 2018.  



Mandarins

We finished our Gold Nugget by early March. Here are two varieties which are later than Gold Nugget, Tango (top picture) and Pixie. Tango seems to be a little sweeter than Pixie.  They both are great mandarins coming from recent grafts onto Mineola Tangelo tree.

Mineola Tangelo

These fruits just got ripe in April.  They are very juicy, seedy, and never sweet enough for me.  I'll continue grafting over this tree new new cultivars.

Valencia oranges

This year I have two varieties fruiting, the standard Valencia (top picture), and Rhode Red. They both need a little more time on the trees. Rhode Red seems to be more ripe than Valencia. 

Red Grapefruit

Fully ripe now, but not sweet enough for me.  I'm grafting more other varieties over this tree.  I'll leave just few small branches with this variety.

Nagami Kumquat

Fully ripe now too.  Has a good balance of sour and sweet.  I'm keeping this tree for now, and I may add Meiwa onto it later.

To sum it up: Tango and Pixie mandarins were my best citrus in early April of 2018.


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