Dear gardeners,

after end of this winter season I can recommand to try a hybrid c.sinensis "Hamlin" X TO Flying dragon. Deepest temps we had top of January with 13 C° (on the ground may be 2 C° lower) and my plants survived without any damage and lost of any leaves. Origin of the plant material was UC Riverside... seeds are may be available for interested gardeners.

Below you can see a foto taken in February of a 5 year old seedling which I planted 2 years ago (2 winters of testing).




Unfortunately this plant did not bloom so far and I did not find any information regarding fruit quality. May be one of you can share more information/experiences on this.

On the other hand Citrange C35 did not well under same conditions. Cracks in the bark at the most critical area right above the ground shows that the limit of this plant was exceeded. So this Citrange is not worth to try.



Brgds from Hamburg

thanks for the pics and info!

It will be interesting to hear whether your C35 survives. Sometimes those cracks will quickly heal. Sometimes the frost has got under the bark and it peels away, or the crack becomes infected and the problem spreads.
Here in England we had a few nights down to -10C. All my in-ground citrus - Morton,#119,Carizzo/Troyer,C.ichangensis,ichangquat - seem to be OK, but some potted citranges and citrumelos have not survived. This is the first time in about ten years that the plants in these pots have been damaged over winter. I presume it was cold enough to freeze the roots completely, and they didn't like it.

Hi Mike,

- 10 C° should bo ok for most of the poncirus hybrids. May if you use real terracotta pots the cooling effekt of them is causing additional stress to the rooting system of the plants. The esthonishing fact in my garden was, that most of the hardy citrus kept their foliage. I read that - 12 C° ist normaly the limit for citrus leaves, but may be there is a small reserve existing that allows deeper temps for short periodes. Anyway this will defenitely help the trees for a quicker start in the new growing seasen.

Below some fotos I took yesterday of my other hardy citrus...



Swingle Citrumelo with 10 % lost of foliage



A second Swingle on the left at the most protected area of my garden (on the right side a Ichangensis X NZL Grapefruit Hybrid which also surprisingly survived).



Hybrid US 852 (C. reticulata Changsha X TO)



My westfacing Houswall with 5 different Poncirus and Ichangensis Hybrids



finaly my southfacing housewall with Rustic as the most established Citrus.

brgds

Hi
Have you gotten fruits from these trees?

Frank

Hi Frank,

only 3 of these varieties are fruiting ... the Swinlge citrumelo ist doing each year lots of blossoms and fruits (first time in the age of 13 years !!!) and even bearing the cool climate the fruits are ripening in Nov/Dec.





The Rustic is also having many fruits, but heat sum is not sufficient and the fruits did not ripe in time before first frosts occure.



Same with the Hybrid US852 which starts sprouting very late and did not get ripe fruits.



Some Ichangensis hybrids had some blossoms but lost the fruits later during the season.

May be your area with warmer temps during growing season will have better results.

But frankly speaking (funny term especially for you Frank) all of them having bitter and acid tast and are not really edible...


Bye