I recently bought a Owari Satsuma plant, after reading recommendations that they were one of the best all around varieties to grow. Then I read this in a University of California Cooperative Extension publication:
http://ceriverside.ucdavis.edu/newsletterfiles/Questions_and_Answers_to_Citrus_Management2489.pdf

"Satsuma is sensitive to high temperature and thus there are no Satsuma varieties suitable to plant in the lower desert valleys."
"Some Owari strains have degenerated into poor trees due to its ability to sport readily producing new strains that are not productive."

Yikes, is the above true? I don't live in the lower desert valleys but I am close to the high desert and summertime temperatures are commonly in the 90's. Will this be OK? When I was at the nursery I did notice that the Satsumas all marked as Owari varied widely in appearance - some had very large fruit the size of grapefruit, others had very small "tangerine" size fruit. I chose one with a number of moderately sized fruit (these were fairly large plants probably 5+ years old).

Hello fftulip,
Our conditions in the gulf coast states are of course very different from yours in the high desert (humidity,night temperatures,soil conditions,rainfall,etc...)-BUT temperatures in the 90's are very common here according to the AHS Heat Zone Map we get 120-150 days over 86 degrees per year-and Owari Satsumas are our most popular choice north of the citrus belt.

A couple of things I learned at the seminar on satsumas I went to in Fairhope, AL-- it is the cold temperatures (30s & 40s) in the fall that give satsumas their sweetness. If you don't have those cool temps, satsumas will stay tart and will not color well. Also, they need some heat in the summer to develop acid (flavor), but late summer heat in August and Sept start to break down the acid and lead to an insipid or weak flavor.

Owari is the original satsuma and all other varieties are derived from bud sports of Owari or their sports.

One other thing I learned-- thick skins can be the result of high leaf to fruit ratio-- common to younger trees.

That shouldn't be a problem in California fall to winter time. Thanks for the info Skeet.

This year my satsumas, even the Miho Wase has wonderful balance of sweetness and tartness. They are almost all gone. We've been eating them since November, with the Miho Wase being the first one to be wiped out from the branches. Now half of the Owaris are gone. Truly excellent this year. The usually insipid Miho Wase tasted as good as the Owari this time, unlike last year.

The seemingly big as a grapefruit satsuma, if you take the fruit and open it up, it will be full of air spaces, yet the sectors are just normal sized.

Biggest drawback of satsumas(less so with other mandarins) in SE Texas is waiting for good quality fruit. I have six year old trees in the ground still giving me puffy, watery fruit. I am still buying my satsumas from 18 year old trees from a friend!

I have been eating Owari satsumas from my sister's tree since early Nov. The early ones were pretty tart, the ones from mid Nov a little tart, but the ones I picked last Sunday have crossed over to the sweet side. I think they will get even sweeter til Jan if they last that long.

I can understand now that those statements are more pertinent for commercial growers. I wouldn't mind if my Satsuma grew some interesting bud sports!

I tasted the first couple of fruit from my Owari Satsuma (early December). They were quite sweet, with just a bit of acidity. One to two seeds per fruit. They weren't puffy or watery. My plant produced a total of about a dozen fruit this season. I'm not sure how old my plant is, here's a picture:

The plant was propagated by La Verne Nursery in California. I think it's on a flying dragon rootstock because the tag said 4-6 feet maximum height. There were larger Owaris (also labeled dwarf) from Durling's at the same nursery in the same size container but I wasn't sure if they would fit in my car plus I wanted a better chance of getting one with a flying dragon rootstock.

Thanks for the suggestions of other mandarin varieties but I don't know if they are hardy enough for my climate. I just moved here but supposedly it regularly drops into the 20's in the winter with occasional dips into the teens. My realtor said that citrus don't grow here but I'm going to give it a try. The Satsuma looks to be marginal for my climate and I will probably have to protect it during the worst freezes. For this winter I think I am going to keep it in the container and move it inside to protect it. I wish I could try lots of other varieties but I only have a couple of protected spots next to my house where I can plant.

The main topic of the seminar in Fairhope was freeze protection. South Alabama has a very similar temperature range-- at least once every 20 years it gets into the low teens which will kill unprotected satsuma trees.

There are 3 ways that they demonstrated you could use to protect satsumas from that kind of cold-- the old-labor intensive way is to bank the tree--pile a couple feet of dirt around the base of the tree. That will keep the part underground and above the graft from freezing, but will kill the top of the tree. It will take a couple years to regrow enought to produce fruit, but it will regrow fast (3 yrs to fruit).

The second way was microjet sprinklers capable of delivering up to 40 gal/hr/tree with one high angle jet focused on the trunk from less than a foot and one circular head in the scaffold branches to protect the main limbs. They had flow rate data for various temperatures, but felt that 40 gal/hr would protect to near single digit temps. This system would protect the trunk and scaffold limbs and the tree would be back in production is the second yr.

The third way they called a high tunnel system-- it was basically a temporary greenhouse that could be covered when needed. This system was complete protection.

If you keep it in a container and bring it in during really cold spells that should be complete protection. You could plant a seed inground--they are nucellar and it will always come back true from the root.

Those are nice workable solutions Skeet.

Over here in the citrus belts, the growers have propellers to mix and draw the warmer air above the citrus canopies. Due to the unique nature that the Kern County is bordered by the mountain to the south when the air is normally being blown through the Delta, an inversion layer is formed, thus the air above a few feet could be warmer than those near where the tree canopies are. In a normal dry adiabatic lapse rate, the air usually gets colder the higher you go up, but in this case, to a certain height, the air does gets warmer, thus it is called an inversion layer. The hot air gets trapped by the mountains and is not going anywhere, and due to its psycrhometric properties, it does not rise up further either. So the growers here exploit that by mixing the air or drawing it down to warm up the citruses.

Sometimes they also couple this with heating crude or spent engine oil. These are done on extensively larger areas.

Of course such solution will not be applicable to a backyard grower. Something more practical like what EZ has built is a very good solution. He built an easy to assemble and easy to collapse greenhouse structure that can be setup in less than half an hour to cover the trees just in case.