Criptic Cold Damage

Saturday morning as I walked around the yard I was surprised at all the new brown leaves on some of the plants in the garden. The low that morning was above freezing and the day turned out to be the warmest in weeks, a high in the 60`s and yet new brown leaves were everywhere!

The Rhapis excelsa at the front of the house had some brown spotting on the leaves that reached beyond the corner of the house. On the other side of the house my Cycas taitungensis that sits under the mystery citrus was heavily damaged. This same plant came through 18 degrees untouched while its more exposed sibling had about half its leaved burned.

Checking weather records for the previous week the coldest temp was 23 degrees a few days earlier, not enough to cause the new damage. I can speculate that it may have been the constant wind drying leaves pushed to their tolerance limits or it may be that the plants have been exposed to their maximum below freezing tolerance and are now beginning to show the damage.

The sago (C. taitungensis) was protected from the initial cold by the citrus, which is now losing leaves as a result of that cold. This more open canopy of the citrus tree may now be allowing the cold and wind to penetrate and Cycas taitungensis is very sensitive to drying winds in winter.

In the end this is all cosmetic damage, the brown leaves will be removed later this winter and the new growth will hide this winter sins.

Citrus

The year of abundance, so much fruit that the trees are still full!A hot summer with regular rains must be citrus heaven. I`ve given bags away and still some of the trees are full, especially bad with the cold we been having.

The Kimbrough Satsuma has been picked, packaged for friends and eaten! The fruits were much bigger this year and extremely juicy but didn`t have the exceptional flavor of other years. I planted the the tree eight years ago and it has lived up to all the satsumas billing of a cold hardy delicious tree. She is grafted on a trifoliate root stock which adds to the cold tolerance and dwarfs the tree but she is no beauty. Satsuma have a lanky growth habit and send out long branches in any direction making them a sprawling plant.

The beauty of the dwarf citrus is the Nippon Orangequat! It grows as a tight mound spotted this time of year with hundreds of 2" bright orange fruit. I personally do not like the taste but many do. The fruit is eaten skin and all just like its kumquat ancestor. It will keep its fruit all winter dropping a few at a time until it blooms again in the spring. Early cold like this dries them but some will stay good all winter.

My poor Meiwa Kumquat would have needed another week to ripen, the cold has frozen them solid and they will dry out quickly now. It' like the orangequat and the satsuma is on a trifoliate root stock dwarfing the plant to a tiny 4'.

This year had a couple of firsts; my Changsha mandarin and Taiwanese lemon both fruited this year! The Changsha is a seedy Mandarin that bears small fruit five years after planting the seed.
The lemon is a year older and has so many fruits the branches are hanging at right angles to the main stem. It`s a sour seedy fruit but easy to grow and not likely ever to be hurt by my cold.

There is another citrus, the mystery tree that was supposed to be a sunquat(a type of lemonquat) but is gigantic. I purchased the seeds year ago from the now defunct Indoor Citrus Society from a reputable grower who must have also had a grapefruit in the yard. The tree and fruit are huge, the leaves look like grapefruit leaves but the plant is more cold tolerant. As to the fruit, they are as large as a grapefruit, yellow as a lemon and shaped like a pear. Delightfully smelling and tasting of both lemon and grapefruit but bland to the taste. The wind causes a little damage each year at the top but it always leafs back with almost no die back. A happy accident.

A Beautiful MIstake

I`ve always wanted a garden full of fruit trees, so when I bought this house I immediately started to collect all the fruits I could possibly grow in this inland suburban Charleston,SC garden. My first acquisitions were of as many kinds of citrus as I thought would survive here. I now have an orchard on the west side of yard that is threatening to push the house off its foundation.

Some of the plants were purchased from fruit nurseries while others are seed collected from local gardens. The grafted material from the nurseries such as my satsuma, kumquat or orangequat are now loaded with fruit while the seed grown plants have grown huge and beautiful but who knows when the plants will produce fruit. Now the USDA has put a ban on the movement of citrus along the South Carolina coast, so for a while I had better learn to love what I have because nothing new will be coming along.

This Honan Red persimmon grows near the street in my frontyard planted so its beauty can be seen by all. And eaten by every one! After seeing old persimmon trees decorated in the fall with fruit as bright as lanterns and leaves lacquered Chinese red I thought what a wonderful way to brighten my yard. What I did not know is that everyone's grandmother has a tree back in the country and that they are beloved by all. You would think the grocery stores would be over flowing with them but it was not till after I picked my first one did I learn what a gooey mess the fresh fruit is.

This will probably be my future mistake but I am going to plant an avocado next year. Her name is Joey and she resides in Texas at the moment. She is the product of an extensive on-line search by Anne and myself this past February. We could find all sorts of named varieties that should be hardy enough to grow here but we could not find an on-line source. All this was mentioned to a friend in Texas who immediately went on-line and found a source for Texas shipping only.

Finally this past August he located and purchased a 3- gallon plant that will be delivered next spring when he visits Charleston. Sounds great right? Well about the same time I read about Persea Wilt that is spreading up the coast and has killed 99% of Persea (red bays) trees. Avocado is also a Persea and appears to be susceptible to this Chinese introduction. I plan to plant it even if it becomes another beautiful mistake.

Sunshine on a Tree

They are orange and shining like Christmas ornaments: the satsumas are ripe! Satsuma mandarins are my favorite citrus to eat. The trees are scraggly and grow in unpredictable directions but they makeup for these landscaping deficiencies by bearing the tastiest fruit.

My 5 year-old grafted tree has hundreds of fruits hanging on it- the second year with an abundant harvest. The Kimbrough scion is grafted on a Poncirus trifoliata root stock which dwarfs and adds cold hardiness to an already cold-tolerant variety.

Two months after being planted the tree endured a 15 degree temperature in my zone 8 yard without damage, nor did a 103 temperature bother it. The tree took three years to produce its first fruits, a harvest of a mere two. But by year four the bounty was so generous that I had to support the branches to keep the fruit off the ground.

My mother in Ohio will be waiting for a box as will my carnivorous sister who was shocked by how good fresh fruit can taste.