I cant answer about the gold nugget yet, i bought it this summer. I dont think winters will be a problem for me with it. Central alabama is hard to say, you might be pushing it. I hope it does great, may take a few years to find out.

My favorite, well considering my owari is out for the forseeable future, edible fruit just leaves the Sunburst really. My meyers are for cooking and juicing, and my ruby red is almost strictly cause of nostalgia and health benefits. Dont think id ever call it a favorite. In a few years i suspect the ponkan or gold nugget will get it. Im also considering a blood orange for the future so who knows, i have strange tastes, anything is possible.

Dam laaz i dont think i could give that many away, how many trees did those come from?

I have, I think 20 satsuma tress, plus my two variegated satsumas.

The gold nugget is a poor choice for our area. It is a late mandarin & the fruit is destroyed almost every year by a freeze long before it is ripe.

redster, I think you could keep Gold Nugget from freezing but it would be more work than other Satsumas. You are already doing that with some of the things you are growing. LA Early hasn't done well around here, not good taste so early, Owari is suppose to be hard to beat. If you can get Xie Shan you would like it I think. The China 9 that I have seen has the best leaves around here but it's very acidic . Beautiful tree though. Brown Select is also very good around here. I want a Kishu mandarin . It has very small fruit but is very sweet . Tom

I think for most years freezing fruit wont be a problem. My main goal is to have fruit year round with not too much overlap so i need my gold nugget. I think i should have done brown select over the owari, but i didnt know much when i bought it and everything said it was the best so..im still waiting

I think of bananas and pineapple as the holy grail of fruit as in hard to grow. I have had pineapple in Hawaii . It was unbelievable compared to what we buy in a grocery store. Does you home grown pineapple approach what you can get fresh in Hawaii ? Tom

Ive only made one pineapple so far but yes it was by far the best i ever had. Sweeter juicier riper than anything you can buy. Its really not hard to grow, once the crown roots you wait 3 years lol. My biggest concern is winter, i typically cover them up most cold nights.

The normal reason why Satsumas become puffy, is because they are left hanging on the tree too long. However, in your case it could also be due to this being the first crop the tree has ever produced. Mandarins, (Satsumas) are actually internally mature and ready to eat before the fruit becomes orange in color. - Millet

Experimental tasting is a very common method. Color is also valuble. -Millet

Even a mature satsuma tree will produce the odd huge puffy fruit once in a while.

This sounds like Scab. It is common on mature satsumas, and is not just on the fruit but also on the leaves (looks like small brown warts on the leaves). Once the tree has scab it will continue to have it until treated. The treatment is copper spray, first application when 75% petals have fallen, then 2 weeks later. There are other application that can be used but start with this. Don't water by overhead sprinkler until June 1, which at that time the fruit and leaves will have matured and less likely to become infected. On the amount of fruit per tree we've picked over 1000 pieces per tree many time in our orchard (250+ trees) so amount of fruit isn't the problem.