Citrus

Today I planted a load of citrus trees.

I planted:

• Mikan
• Dekopon
• Ponkan
• Iyokan
• Lemon

These varieties should see me through the winter season as they each fruit in succession. All of these fruits are available in Ehime Prefecture in abundance, and at very low prices. For example, a bag of dekopon costs 100 yen for about 8~10. But since we eat so many of them, it makes sense to grow them ourselves. I eat 4~5 of these citrus fruit at one meal... The peel also makes a good composting material.

The lemon will be good for making lemon alcohol which is yet another drink I like. I expect we'll also make lemon marmalade with it too, something you rarely see in shops here. We once had a surfeit of iyokan when my rented allotment included several iyokan trees, and we made some very good marmalade out of them using a pressure cooker.

All these varieties are produced by grafting, which seems like a very clever technology. The trees have a little bit of black plastic wrapped around the cut. I wonder what happened to the tops of the rootstocks after they got supplanted by citrus...