North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Kieran &/or Donna" <holycow@frontiernet.net>]

Richard,  Citrus seeds must indeed stay moist, there are just seeds that are like that... chestnuts, and from what I hear, persimmon seeds.  And yes, Meiwa makes nucellar seedlings, so eventually the seedlings will produce the same fruit as the parent.  The key word here is "eventually".  Seedling citrus exhibit prolonged juvenility, they grow tall and lanky with lots of sharp thorns, and they take much longer to crop than trees grafted from an "old budline".  If you wanted to give the seeds away for people to just play with, that's ok.  If you really wanted to give your friends nice trees, you could graft the seedlings from the top of Lee's tree.  You can't do it in the spring unless you get scions from him way in Jan before they start to sprout.  You could bud in high summer I guess.  Or you could really speed things up.  I could chop back and dig up a bunch of trifoliate seedlings that are in my way and send them to you to pot up, then you can graft or bud in spring or summer.  There are plenty that are pencil sized or even bigger, it would put you way ahead.  Since kumquats are hardier than lemons, they seem like a better bet for us up here.  We could leave the pots out longer, let them get colder in the garage or maybe even a well insulated shed or bury them like figs.  But it seems like the very best producer in pots is Meyer lemon, don't ask me why.  It's apparently an orange-lemon cross that's used like a lemon.  It is about as hardy as an orange, much hardier than lemons, so it's popular as an inground tree at all northern limits of citrus production. 

    I remember an article by Richard Harrison some 20 years ago about putting graft unions underground.  I was quite impressed.  He's too far north to reliably grow anything but kumquats otherwise.  He also talked about doing "nurse root" grafts if I remember correctly, to get the scions going and maybe get them to self root.  It's a clever trick that I think about sometimes when I want to do something tricky myself.  In northern Florida it'll years at a time when people could be growing backyard citrus, if only they had their graft unions below ground.  Where my parents live the usual approach is to mound dirt up over the bases of young citrus when winter comes.  (It's sand, so easy to do)  In Dec 89 many trees were damaged to the ground.  My parents kept trying to save theirs afterward by cutting the top back, don't know how far back they wound up cutting them but their neighbors did much better.  They cut their citrus down to the ground and now 20 years later their trees are much more beautiful than anyone elses.  Citrus are beautiful trees, with smooth bark, and theirs are gracefully branched low where you can appreciate them.  Citrus trees recovering from this kind of damage can be cropping again in 2 years. 

    I suppose that all those exciting tropical fruits being grown in Houston are all dead now?  I thought of them when we heard how low their temps had gone.  I know they got it really bad in '83, and I know what Florida looks like after going 20 years without a really bad freeze.  Bougainvillea everywhere, huge thorny plants that will be most unpleasant to clean up after the inevitable bad freeze.   Better to compost them in place, wood rots so fast there.  Donna