The kumquat has also been a great snacking fruit. This is the sweet kumquat. It started out this year with awfully light leaves but has greened up recently after applying another dose of cow manure. It's really shaded too much in the winter because the sun drops mostly behind the plane of the garage roof. I always get a lot of wax scale and I spend some time hand-removing it when it gets bad....just because I stubbornly refuse to let it suck juices from my tree without at least some kind of revenge!

A blood orange that is coming back strong after getting frozen to the ground one year. Thank-goodness I probably planted it too deep or it would be tri-foliate root stock coming back. It hasn't shown signs of wanting to bloom yet....maybe next year. I got one blood orange before it got killed back and it was WONDERFUL!

Here is a lime that got killed back this past winter. It's coming back nicely but I'm afraid it will never produce. I think I'm just not far enough south for limes.

And here is the loquat (Japanese plum). It's not a citrus but it's an amazing tree. It blooms here during the winter...as this one did for the first time right in the middle of some sleet we got during a cold snap. I have no idea how they get pollinated in the winter. Before I tried the fruit it produced this spring, I didn't really care much for the tree. The fruit is slightly tart, dripping wet juicy, and tastes a little like an apricot. It's a nice gap-filler, giving springtime fruit so my wait for fall citrus isn't as long.

And I finally have a Meyer lemon! A coworker gave me this tree in exchange for a young fig tree I needed to find a home. It had been in a five-gallon pot for quite some time and has a massive trunk for its size. The roots were rotting back but I think it's going to do fine. I may have to move it if it doesn't do well in the partial shade of the pecan overhead.

Here are some of my earliest fruit tree plantings. These Ponderosa lemons have done really well but I just don't need hundreds of huge lemons. I still haven't finished the juice from the crop year before last. These trees have been a little bit like having two cats...they make a healthy tree from seed and I just can't seem to mow down the volunteers that come up where I throw the pulp and seeds out.

Some volunteer Ponderosa lemons I transplanted to hopefully make a privacy fence some day. When I was a kid, I really didn't like mowing around thorny landscaping my parent's had and promised myself I wouldn't have thorny stuff in my yard when I grew up. Seed-grown ponderosas have LOTS of thorns....arrrgh!

Speaking of thorns, this seed-grown calamondin has nightmarish thorns. It's 10-12 feet tall and hasn't even thought about blooming yet. I wish I had planted something better here but now curiosity, and a little fear, keeps me from digging it up.

I do have a grafted calamondin (on the right) that has fruited almost since the day I planted it. It doesn't fruit as much here in the shade as it might in a more sunny location but it has made a nice tree and just about as much calamondins as I can stand to eat. To me, they are the definition of sour.

I have three kumquats. This one just wasn't doing well so I transplanted it last summer, yeah, terrible time to transplant a tree. I planted it shallower and on a mound. It lost lots of branches but has finally turned around, is blooming, and looks really healthy.

This ponderosa lemon was an experiment in air-layering. The branch had two lemons on it when I cut it from the tree and planted it. One lemon remains and the branch has recently put out a few water sprout-like shoots that are growing like weeds. I suppose I should remove the remaining lemon but this was an experiment so I think I'll leave it. It will be interesting to see if this little tree blooms next spring.

And I think I'll finish up this series with my new Dancy tangerine. I planted it early this spring and it has bloomed and put out one growth flush. I left a few fruit as a compromise between letting it use all it's energy to grow wood and wanting to have at least one tangerine. I'm right in the middle of building a retaining wall around it to hold the soil I mounded up for this tree. Crossing fingers I can keep this one warmer than the lime that hasn't done so well in my climate.

Thanks for letting me share my successes and challenges and thanks for helping me get here with your input. I have at least tried most of the things folks have shared with me. I'm still guilty of letting grass grow right up to my trees and probably some other things but I'm not perfect at anything else I do either!

Nice trees! Thanks for showing them.

Cory

I enjoyed seeing your trees and particularly the last tree and retaining wall construction. I will have to do that on any tree I put out side.

Steve

Great yard and trees - thank you for giving us a look!

I thought our harsh, freeze here in Northern CA last December would delay the CLM this year. But just found a few leaves with the scoundrels the other week. The attractant traps are up and the Imidacloprid is working its way in.

Thanks again - George

Hopefully I'll have a progress update on the retaining wall soon. It will be a very low wall made with rock left from the structure in the background.

George, no leaf miners yet....fingers crossed. Seems like they were well-established by this time last year.