[conspire] Fwd: Re: Fw: [scv-crfg] passion fruit

[paulz at ieee.org]

 The "issue" is getting scion wood.  That would be the top part that is grafted onto the stock or root part.
Citrus world wide under a very serous threat of citrus greening disease or HLB from the Chinese huánglóngbìng.  This is a bacterial disease with a very long incubation period.  It is transmitted by Asian citrus psyllid, which is a tiny insect.  Both were unknown in Calilfornia 10 years ago.  Then an infected tree was found in Southern California.  Apparently the homeowner had gotten cuttings from China. 

The time between when a tree is infected and shows symptoms can be years. Meanwhile the infection can be spreading to other trees.  In Florida miles and miles of citrus groves have been killed. Groves that have been family owned for generations are facing bankruptcy.  Researchers are frantically trying to find a treatment and/or disease resistant varieties.
In California citrus is important commercially and also popular with home owners.  There is a complete quarantine on moving citrus plants and even cuttings.  This includes specifically Santa Clara County and San Mateo County.   So, even though my trees appear healthy and there are no currently known infected trees in Santa Clara County, it is still verboten to move leaves and/or branches to your home. 

Commercial growers must grow their plants inside of special screening.  So when you see a tree at the local nursery or Costco, it has been carefully raised and handled and inspected to be sure it is free of disease.
There is one exception.  UC Riverside has long been doing important work on citrus for a long long time.  They have more than 1000 varieties under cultivation.  The "catalog" is at https://citrusvariety.ucr.edu/varieties.html
Individuals can easily open an account and order budwood.   A minimum of 6 buds of a variety at $0.75 each, plus overnight FedEx shipping charge.

They batch up orders and process them on a schedule  https://ccpp.ucr.edu/budwood/cutdates.php   It used to be monthly, but that has recently changed.
My success rate with grafting citrus is maybe 10%.  But if we don't try, nothing will happen. If you want to try calamansi, I will think about what varieties of mandarin I might want to order for myself in the same shipment.


    On Sunday, September 1, 2019, 12:33:04 PM PDT, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:  
 
 Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

...

> IMHO, better to have to prune, than to have to coax a plant to grow
> with specific kinds of fertilizer, watering schedules, etc. I now have
> a lemon tree I need to cut back so my caladonin (aka calamansi) can
> get more sun.  

Reminds me, Paul:  At your convenience, can we try again with grafting a
cutting from your calamansi onto mine that died the death?  The
rootstock is still going like blazes.


_______________________________________________
conspire mailing list
conspire at linuxmafia.com
http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire
  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/conspire/attachments/20190902/89951d45/attachment.html>