These two trees are the same age(budded in spring 2003 or three years since planting as of next spring), same rootstock(two year old flying dragon rootstock) , planted the same year(2004), fertilized the same(last on July 4) and are 8 feet apart in the same row. For some reason one was damaged by our recent 28F freeze and one wasn't! Top is orlando tangelo and bottom is fairchild mandarin. They should be of similar hardiness. I didn't post a picture of the clementine and page mandarin of same age planted 8 feet from the fairchild mandarin, again undamaged! This is the first year for fruit on the fairchild and clementine and I got 3-4 dozen low quality fruit from each tree. I let the orlando fruit 3 fruit last year and this year I intended to pick all the fruit off to let it catch up in growth with the other two trees but one fruit escaped my eagle eye until it was mature! I am amazed how quickly and heavily the trees on flying dragon have fruited after I skipped the first year to let them grow. My same age golden grapefruit on flying dragon was fried similar to the orlando tangelo.
