February fruits of Sacramento Valley

 Many citrus fruits can be harvested this month. I have the following:

Oranges: Washington Navel, Navellina, Cara-Cara, Boukhobza, Sanguinelli, Tarocco, my fake Cara-Cara, Vainiglia Sanguino.

Grapefruit: Cocktail.  The sweetest grapefruit I ever had.

Pomelo: Valentine (came from a friend's tree, but I should have my own shortly).  This is an excellent selection. 

Tangor: Kyomi. Very juicy mandarine type of fruit.  A parent of Sumo / Shiranui / Dekopon

Mandarins: Algerian clementine, Gold Nugget, Tahoe Gold, Page, Tango

Lime: Palestine acidless, Rangpur

Two tropical guava trees are still fruiting: my Brazilian orange seedling and Malaysian Red

Avocado Royal Wright started shedding the fruits after windy days.  I am picking those that have yellow stems. I think they are better than I expected them to be.  I will compare them agains Bacon in a separate post

I collected some white sapote Vernon fruits from a friend's very large tree in South Bay. It might be possible to have them here in the winter too when my trees get more mature.

Below are four pigmented oranges, starting from the upper left clockwise: Vainiglia Sanguino, Sanguinelli, Tarocco, Boukhobza. 

Vainiglia Sanguino is very nicely flavored acidless orange, Sanguinelli has lots of color and flavor, but low on sugar, Tarocco is sweeter than Sanguinelli.  Boukhobza is an excellent blood orange with the sweetness of a Navel orange.

None of these pigmented oranges had dark red outer color. Sanguinelli and Tarocco (right) are below.

And the last but not least, I believe I harvested the last dragon fruit of the season. Sugar Dragon along with the Palestine acidless lime are below.  Pretty good tasting Sugar Dragon fruit for February. And this lime is very unique and pleasant to eat.

Check our sales site if we have the avocado and white sapote cuttings available reallygoodplants.com

My Sumo seedling and Shiranui fruit tasting 2021

 A year ago I wrote about my Sumo seedling and how it compares to actual Shiranui  This year I didn't get to tasting the fruits at the earlier time, and I can not confirm that my seedling is earlier.  It might well be earlier, but I only started tasting the fruits in February.  What is really different is the juice vesicles of my seedling fruits. They are always more firm than the ones from Shiranui fruits. The seedling fruit density is at about Gold Nugget mandarin level.

The Sumo seedling and Shiranui fruits vary in shape, rind thickness and the amount of sugar even when collected from the same tree. In the pictures below, two left fruits are from my seedling. The top left is from a tree grown in Vacaville, the graft was made directly onto a citrus rootstock (C-32 or C-35). Low left fruit is coming from a graft made onto Minneola Tangelo tree.  Two right fruits are from the same tree of Shiranui grown in Isleton, CA.

The best fruit here is my seedling grafted on Minneola Tangelo, bottom left.  It had the most complexity and sugar along with the firmer structure than Shiranui fruits. It is possible that the rootstock alone defines the difference here. In my experience, any citrus grafted onto my old Minneola Tangelo produces excellent fruits. 

A few days later we tasted my seedling fruits again. On the left is my seedling from Vacaville tree, and on the right is from graft onto Minneola. Both fruits were excellent. Complex and sweet in flavor and as dense as the Gold Nugget fruit.

I think the real test would be to graft Shiranui onto my Minneola Tangelo and compare the fruits from the same tree and same location.  I have a feeling that my seedling is different. However, I need to get a good amount of both fruit types from the same tree to figure this out.