kumquat

Do any of you grow kumquats? There used to be a big tree at Lander University (in Greenwood) that produced fruit. I've tried a time or two to grow them, but had no luck. Any advice? Thanks.

You can't grow them from seed if i remember right but you should have no problem growing them. I see them around Hilton Head and Savannah. I see them fruit every year.

Well...it gets tricky but you can grow them from seed but you may not end up with fruit like that of the original parent.

The characteristics of the plant grown from your saved seed my differ quite a bit from what you expected (perhaps more thorns on the plant, perhaps a much sour fruit if any fruit at all). Lots of the commercial breeders use cuttings and graft those onto different root stock. Apparently "they" say kumquat doesn't grow well on its own root but considering they grow all over the mountains in China and those are not grafted but wild ones. Course now, ya never know what kind of fruit they are getting from those wild ones.

Meiwa is a cultivated (possibly hybrid) kumquat that we have and my daughter and I germed some seeds from the fruit. So far we have a very thorny plant about two years old (that has been sadly neglected, I might say!). However, this thread makes me want to go repot it and take better care of it. Thanks for bringing this up, landerlilly!

Shoe.

Thanks for the encouragement. We had planted one from a nursery last fall and the following weekend had the coldest weather of the winter. It didn't care for it, but there's life in it yet so we're going to try coddling it along and see what happens. It would be worth it to have some fruit--it gets harder to find every year.
Laura