Last week I found a pint of kumquats in the grocery store. And though it was a bit pricey, I bought it. I have an acute Proustian memory of fruit gift baskets arriving in our home at winter holiday time, their fragrance alone bringing comfort and joy. Since childhood, I have absolutely adored the tiny citrus fruits.
My cousin Reuven has a veritable grove of exotic fruit trees in his backyard, one of which is a kumquat. The moment I plucked a ripe fruit from the branch one sunny day, I knew I had to get a tree of my own.
But if kumquat fruit is hard to find in New England, trees are even more rare. So, when a few years ago I found a sapling in the Home Depot nursery, I bought it. It was looking a little frail but it was the only one there, and I figured I would nurse it to health. It did grow well, full and green, but it didn’t produce a single fruit in three years. So, I called the nursery whose name and number were printed on the tag. I sent the owner a photo of the tree. Surprise, surprise, it wasn’t, in fact, a kumquat. What I owned was the sour orange root stock onto which the kumquat was supposed to have been grafted. When I asked the man to send me a replacement, he gave me a long story. Basically, a run-around. Eventually, I just gave up.
But after three days of blissful enjoyment of my grocery store kumquats last week, and despite the previous failed attempt, I bought myself a little meiwa kumquat tree. It arrived safely the other day, and I placed it in the sunroom to play with its houseplant cousins.
I am cautiously optimistic that this attempt will produce a full crop of the sweet-tart ovals.
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