There’s a lockbox on the truck where buyers insert their money. The truck is stocked with bags of satsumas, and purchasers operate on the honor system. In the fall, many travelers drive by (and stop at) the Harrisons’ truck parked in front of their house with its iconic “Satsumas Now!” sign. While I waited for my own trees to produce, I relied on the Harrison family orchard located on Highway 98, just south of Fairhope. The experts at Old Thyme Feed informed me that it would be a few years before those trees produced fruit. Shortly after my wife and I moved to Weeks Bay in 2006, I decided to plant some trees of this amazing fruit. Photo by Elizabeth Gelineau The Harrisons of Baldwin County The harvest for 2022 is setting up to yield a bumper crop. The most successful rootstock was and remains the trifoliata rootstock. Winberg, a Swedish immigrant and self-taught horticulturist living in Silverhill, decided to lick the temperature sensitivity of the fruit and experimented with grafting the Owari variety of satsuma to several rootstocks that could withstand colder temperatures. There have been several attempts to establish a satsuma growing industry in Lower Alabama but most failed due to freezes or dips in the economy. Jesuits brought satsumas (named for the Japanese region where they were cultivated) from Asia to North America in the 18th century, starting groves in the Jesuit Plantation upriver from New Orleans. Satsumas are true mandarin oranges, unlike tangerines and clementines, which are hybrids of mandarins. I like to surprise out-of-state friends and guests with a treat that is only grown on the Central Gulf Coast - that bright orange, uber sweet, easy-to-peel, seedless citrus wonder, the satsuma. We Alabamians are eager to brag about the many wonderful things unique to our state - Auburn or Alabama football, Conecuh sausage, Chilton County peaches, sugar-white beaches or the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, for example. A basketful of fresh satsumas, still warm from the south Alabama sunshine.
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