June 16th, I was scheduled to be the last speaker, but then I later learned the week before of the piano recital of my kids scheduled about the same time, and so I begged Harvey to present my short talk to the group. Truly appreciated that Harvey! Harvey was doing critical irrigation, but he helped me out. Harvey did a good job of presenting it, as I learned from others. Much appreciated Harvey!

The Citrus Day Event was coordinated by Idell Weydemeyer. Thanks to her for arranging the event. It was only open to selected few people at first due to limited seating, so Master Gardeners and various CRFG chairman were invited, but then, the auditorium became available and so it was opened to many other people, including members of CRFG.

Anyway I attended the morning 8:00 am, and helped the discussion group until 10:00 am, attended the first hour lecture of Toots Bier, picked up my budwoods and headed home for the recital at around 11:20 am.

Toots Bier is a retired professor from UCR and she managed the citrus germplasm and also coordinated with the USDA citrus germplasm. She is the authority when it comes to which variety is good for various climates as well as intimate knowlege of growing them and maximizing their qualities for various productions. Some of the important links posted in this forum came from her work. She is doing various lecture to educate the public about the wonderful citrus varieties and how to care for them. It is passion for her to teach others, and truly her lectures, you should attend whenever possible. "If you only have space for 10 fruit trees in your yard, then you should have 10 citruses!" That's a hardcore citrus enthusiast. She also added that citruses are mostly care free, fragrant, and beautiful everygreen foliage trees. It has every characteristic that you would love as an ornamental and healthy fruit source, right from your yard, and you can have fruits year round by carefully selecting the cultivars.

She also brought with her sample budwoods, approved for release to hobbyist, and so I got myself some Tahoe Gold, Gold Nugget, China Satsuma-11, and another Lemonquat (which Harvey held out for me and forgot to pick it up). There were no Tango budwoods though. There were many others that I would love to get, but we are limited to pick up only 2 budsticks for non-speaker and 5 budsticks for speakers.

Aside from the budwoods, she brought 12 types of citrus fruits for tasting, including the Tango Mandarin and the new publicly available Delfino pigmented orange.


Here's my personal notes:
Mary Ellen Lime - truly insipid taste, not even sweet. It is like a flavorless, tartless piece of citrus flesh. Only aromatic, but flavorless, at least to my taste buds. I have this cultivar, hasn't fruited for me yet, but will keep it as novelty and wouldn't recommend it.

We also have valencias and navels, and they taste sweet and flavorful as can be expected from Southern California, so no need to take notes on most of those. The Delta is seedless valencia and tasted quite very delcisious and sweet. The Barnfield Navel is a late one, it is now June and they still have this Navel, and it is also very sweet.

All I can say about Delfino is WOW! It is the supersweet pigmented orange I have ever tasted. It lacks the slightly sprightly flavor of Tarocco, which is my best blood orange when it comes to taste, but the Delfino is the sweetest blood orange to traverse my tongue. The only downside is that there is not much pigmentation, only very few sparsely pigmented red cells.

The Tango is quite a little bit on the sour side but nonetheless very sweet. It is not as good as the Gold Nugget that I have tasted elsewhere, but tasted much better than the Pixie.

Now there is that Nordman seedless nagami where I gobbled up a couple of fruits, and truly no seeds and so munched away for a very good interplay of sweet rind and slightly sour rind without the bitterness of crushed seeds.

There were a total of 12 citruses, and only took notes of that I don't have in my library yet.

Iit is regrettable that I was not able to attend but because of previous commitment I can not forgo.
Thanks for inviing me Joe anyway.

Benny

I will let you know Benny for next events. It's all great news about your kids!

I would have posted the event and would have invited everyone should have I known that there would be more seating capacity, and didn't know about that until the last couple of days before the event.

More Notes from Toots:

My notes are not complete and I only wrote down what I think I have not emphasized when teaching others how to care for citruses. Here's some tips for homegrowers according to Toots Bier.

Best irrigation method is via microsprayers connected to a drip line using a spray pattern of 270 deg to avoid spraying the trunk but cover a lot of ground. Citruses don't like lots of water dripping on the trunks as it encourages phytopthora. Use more microsprayers as the tree grows and place the sprayers further away from the trunk to encourage roots to expand.

Roots of mature citrus trees go only 36 inches deep on the average.

Tips for selecting trees for your yard:
Choose the cultivars with the most expensive fruits first. Do not select those that you can buy very cheaply from the stores.
Select different cultivars in order to have year round production
Select fruit trees that keep well on the tree. The best place to store the fruits are on your trees and not in your fridge. Fruits that keep well on the tree tend to be sweeter the longer they stay.

To minimize yellowing, you can use foliar application of Fe, Zn and Mn. Similarly, when buying citrus fertilizers, make sure these three micronutrients are present. Best time to apply this foliar spray is during the first signs of growth flush in spring.

Generally recommended cultivars (although there are others she mentioned, these are the ones that are note-worty to me):
Trovita - general area orange, good for wide range of climate
MidKnight and Delta valencias - seedless summer oranges
Ortanique - very good keeper summer juice orange: Fruits can be harvested starting Feb and keep well into August
Rio Red - expect this to be tart the way you like it, and is adapted to wide range of climate.
Oro Blanco - if you expect sweet grapefruit, so sweet that you wouldn't need to add sugar, performed well in a wide range of climate when it comes to expected sweet taste.
Gold Nugget - very good keeper, very good tasting, peels off easily, fruits can be harvested starting March and keep well into August.
Seedless Kishu - small but completely seedless. You can peel it off easily in one stroke, and the fruit taste like candy in two normal bites.
Tango - same property as Delight or W.Murcott, but practically seedless. Almost all budwoods from UCR CCPP and other germplasm were ordered by commercial growers for the ever increasing planting, and so the retail nurseries seldom carry these cultivars for sale at the moment. Expect the tango to be the cheapest mandarin type of fruits to be sold in the stores for a few years to come due to tremendous acreage of commercial planting, and so why plant it when you can get it cheaper?


For Marginal cold climate with occassional frosts and freezes select those cultivars with early season harvest before the frosts or the freezing nights come. Plant the citruses in the warmest microclimate of your yard. Be prepared to have your plant protection setup within a forecast notice of cold snap.

For those with cool summers and other coastal areas, you select varieties that hold very long on the tree. Lean towards the low acid types of citruses. Don't worry about the tart types, such as lemons, grapefruits and limes, they will be good in those areas. But for grapefruits that are expected to be sweet, they will fail you, except for the Oro Blancos. Other citruses that would work well would be Vainiglia Sanguigno, Lima acidless, and Trovita oranges.

Thanks for en lighting me for the many things you mentioned.
I saved them for future references.
Joe:
Can you explain to me the acid to ratio, tart, and how do you determine "the best tasting citrus" as far as the % of acid or sugar on a citrus fruit.
When you look at the characteristic or description of a citrus fruit, I am not too sure what they mean. It's all Greek to me.

Benny, the meaning of tart varies according to person's context and experience. My interpretation when applied to citruses also varies with cultivar. When applied to lemons and limes, it simply refers to the sourness of the fruits, the acidity, the more tart, the more acid or sharpness like cutting your tongue taste. When applied to grapefruits, it is combination of slight bitterness and sourness, just like most wine enjoyed by people who love some bitterness and sourness at the same time. The sugars to acid ratio determines if the fruit is on the sweet or sour side, but can be very misleading. I myself would love some acidity in the fruits but the sugar content should be high. I have not yet determined what level of acidity before checking on the sugar to acid ratio. I am working on that. I think I need to define the minimum acid content before deciding on what ratio to select from.

The Vainiglia is an extreme example. It is true that it has the highest sugar to acid ratio, but was not actually supersweet. The reason is that the acids are so low that it jacked up the ratio sky high when in fact the sugar content is only so so. So next time I will have to look at sugar content and the ratio, or the acid content and the ratio.

But nonetheless, the criteria based on the sugar to acid ratio work in most cases but not all as I refine my selections. Will post more on this topic as time goes by and more data from actual fruit tastes comes in.

Important Citrus Links Recommended by Toots Bier:

Citrus Pest Management
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/selectnewpest.citrus.html

Learn about your soil, in greater detail. Locate your place with ease:
http://casoilresource.lawr.ucdavis.edu/drupal/node/27

The Citrus Industry Bible:
http://lib.ucr.edu/agnic/webber/

The UCR Citrus Variety Collection
http://www.citrusvariety.ucr.edu/citrus/index.html

Thanks again, Joe, for the notes. I enjoyed the opportunity to present your talk and Powerpoint show. I am glad that I was able to visit your place earlier this year to give some first-hand observations. I also appreciated qualifying as a speaker as that entitled me to additional budwood choices. Perfect timing with the rootstock order just showing up the other day, though I will let some of them grow out a bit first.

I watched Toots on Gardening By the Yard and she was fantastic!!!! Seems like a fun person with lots of Knowledge..
I envy you getting to visit with her.. I'd love to visit with her.. I taped the show.. and have watched it a few time.. All my family know who Toots is!!
Love your notes!!! Great job!!!

Gina *BabyBlue*

Thanks Gina!

Thanks Harvey for hosting the power point file. Here's where to download my short talk delivered by Harvey:

http://www.chestnuts.us/JoeCitrusDay.ppt