Are you growing cardinal limequats in your yard ? Key Limequats are a pretty little citrus fruit yield with good flavor , develop from a cross between fundamental limes and kumquat . The trees are short and moderately cold - audacious , unlike the very stale sensible Key birdlime .
A few years before I quit recommending citrous fruit ( for the reasons , keep reading ) , I planted a central limequat in my grounds . This class it give me a gracious lid - full of fruit . Here ’s my recent telecasting where you could see the little tree and its fruit :
Key limequat rind are sweet while their centers are quite sour . After you eat one , it ’s very much like you took a bite of off-key Key slaked lime pie .
I ’m proceed to attempt to talk my married woman into realize some primal limequat Proto-Indo European with the fruit I just reap so we can see how it compare to true Key lime pie . The taste is n’t exactly the same , as key limequats tend more towards the sour without that tangy biting undercurrent that gives Key lime their unequalled flavor visibility .
Growing Key Limequats
primal limequats are a non - demanding citrus that ask little more than a small corner of your grounds and some water to get established .
I overlay my citrus fruit Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree on freezing nights with parsimoniousness store tabloid and blankets , asyou can see in this picture . The central limequat always comes through ok , unlike some of my orange tree which usually suffer some Robert Frost harm despite the blankets .
Hoe away weeds around the cornerstone of your Key limequat and it will pay back you with flying growth . I mulched mine , though that ’s not the recommended drill for citrus .
fundamental limequat tree can take some shade , can develop in pots and they ’ll also do great planted up against the south wall of a house if you ’re in a frigid country .
If you hit your Key limequat and other citrus trees with chemical substance plant food , they ’ll farm like crazy . Here ’s a schedule for fertilizing citrus . That said , organic alternative are belike dear . Though I inseminate all my citrus fruit this yr on schedule with 10 - 10 - 10 and they grew like dotty , they also meet a bit from bug attacks – as predicted by my ally Andi on the citrus fertilize post linked above :
AsAndiremarked , increase increment via chemical agency leaves the new growth more susceptible to louse and disease tone-beginning . That does n’t mean it ’s always awry , just that I do n’t urge it for folks not uncoerced to keep a close eye on their Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree .
And that ties into the independent danger with grow fundamental limequats : citrus rejuvenation .
Key Limequats and Citrus Greening
The large problem you ’ll face in grow key limequats is the greening computer virus . rejuvenation kill all citrus and it ’s spread throughout my household state of Florida . If you ’re in a location where citrus rejuvenation is n’t a problem , great . Otherwise , the life history of any citrus fruit tree diagram you plant is likely to be cut short . It ’s basically incurable , though some pace have been made in recent years with heat treatments and nutritional supplementation .
I lately wrote a vocal on citrus greening . Here , watch it :
Does n’t that bring a tear to your eye ?
I hate what citrus rejuvenation has done to the citrus across my state and to the Fannie Merritt Farmer that swear on citrus for their livelihoods . I generally blame monoculture farmingfor this disease , yet I understand why citrus is produce the way it is for the rice beer of management and harvesting . Some researchersfeel the same mode :
“ One of the reasons greening has hit the citrus tree industry so hard is that raiser reckon on just a few varieties to produce their harvest , because they ’re most likely to resist Florida weather and still make yield consumer need to bribe , Grosser say .
“ For the course of the last several 100 years , we ’ve been eliminating the genetic variety in the state of nature , so citrus has kind of gone to a monoculture where there are just a handful of varieties grown , ” Grosser say . ”
You could also potentially lay the rap on detached trade , which has bring in a lot of flora material and pests from other land ( not to remark the fact that it ’s gutted the US saving and replete up our hardware stores with Chinese junk ) .
So – should you plant a Key limequat in the face of rejuvenation ? That ’s up to you . It may live a long productive life … or it may need to be pull out in four years . I have interpret that kumquats are more tolerant to greening than some citrus fruit , as are Key Limes . This may just be because they ’re less attractive to the psyllid that disseminate greening , rather than any intrinsical opposition to the disease itself .
Thus far , my citrus Tree are doing fine . We ’ll have to look and see – and I ’m enjoy eat my Key limequats in the meantime .
