Can you eat them when green, with a bit of orange...they taste fine nice and sweet, but were tasteless and quite nasty a few weks ago, i have no idea of what variety they are, tree was just listed as a citrus reticulata, mandarin bitter orange tree , theres nothing bitter about them though,they are sweet like clemantines, if there better when totaly orange they must be very nice then, most are about 1.5 inch accross, but some are upto 2.5 inch I spent yesterday moving my 2 large citrus trees from the front of the house to the back of the house, hard work, it took 4 of us 5 hours in total to move them, the lemon tree got stuck in the gateway and we had to remove the sandstone gateposts..... There never is any frost at the back of the house so it will be safer out there last night the car was iced up on the windows outside the front of the house, the trees have been ok out there at normal temperatures of 12C to 14C in the day and about 5C in the night, they seem fine though The back of the house is surounded by walls to stop the wind and is always quite warm, i am building a floor for them to stand on from dow foam with heater mat to keep the roots warm, and a large polytunnel for over them, there ok for now outside though i think till the start of december they will be fine I had to make an `emergancy removal` from the front of the house yesterday, before the polytunnel was built,...... Some idiots decided to steal the mandarins and lemons, not one at a time, but by snapping the branches of fruit off the tree, they tipped the trees over and started combing the fruit off the trees into baskets, when that was too slow they started snapping branches off..... They didnt get many fruits though, they still have many on,. the lemons thorns stopped them getting many at all and the mandarin lost about 10-20% of the fruit Theres still a fair bit though on the trees, just annoys me about the branches, it looks tatty now, it will grow back though, the closer pic is taken today, the other was a few weeks back
If the backyard never gets frost why not plant them in the ground ? Mandarins are one of the hardiest citrus edible citrus there is. Lemon's require the least amount of heat to ripen. I would have them in the ground if they were mine. Mandarins are edible long before they are completely orange. Some varieties like Satsuma have a very short holding time before they become puffy and start to decline in taste. It's hard to tell what variety you have, but if I had to guess I would say Willow-leaf Mandarin (Citrus deliciosa). Very nice tree by the way.
I dont want to plant them in the ground for a few reasons, however it would probably be safer to put them in the ground , the lemon tree blew over a month ago the plastic pot folded on one side and over it went, i have the new pots here for them, just a matter of getting th engine hoist i keep at work, to the house to lift the trees up to change the pot, at the minute the lemon needs to be braced to stop it falling over in the wind, i dont feel like tipping them on the side and standing them back up Im planning on moving house at some point over the next year or so, so i want to be able to take them with me and not have to start growing new ones The soil in our area is very wet as we have an underground river right under the house, i dont think it would be good for most plants, we have never had anything live in the soil apart from sycamore trees, the river does hold the temperature up in winter though As well as the citrus i have all my other fruit trees in large pots as well, crab apples, eating and cooking apples, peaches, plums ,damsons ,pears ,kiwi fruits , i even keep carrots, potatoes and raspberrys in pots I like to be able to shove things around a bit to change things and make things fit in!
