Citrus: Complete Guide to Selecting & Growing More Than 100 Varieties for California, Arizona Texas, the Gulf Coast and Florida (Illustrated) [Paperback]

Lance Walheim (Author), Don Fox (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1996

For anyone who grows citrus or wants to begin, this book offers a complete and up-to-date guide to selecting and growing more than one hundred varieties of oranges, mandarins, lemons, limes, grapefruit, and kumquats, as well as exotic citrus. Lance Walheim has tailored his book to growers in California, Arizona, Texas, the Gulf Coast, and Florida, and tells also how to grow successfully in cold-winter areas. Walheim offers practical methods for making citrus part of outdoor living areas—in entries, backyards, courtyards, and even in containers for patio gardens. He also tells how, with the extended and varied harvest seasons of citrus, one can grow and enjoy fresh fruit almost year-round. More than 100 color photos show the size, color, and shape of fruit and the mature appearance of trees, while charts show at a glance where a particular variety will grow and when to expect a harvest. Walheim also discusses alternative, chemical-free methods of pest control to ensure healthy as well as healthful fruit.

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Ironwood Press (December 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0962823643
• ISBN-13: 978-0962823640
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 7.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #321,727 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great citrus guide with wonderful pix/info, October 10, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Citrus: Complete Guide to Selecting & Growing More Than 100 Varieties for California, Arizona Texas, the Gulf Coast and Florida (Illustrated) (Paperback)

I have read several other books on citrus cultivation, but this book is by far the best i've run across. It has excellent photographs of the hundreds of citrus fruits, both on the tree and of the inside of the fruit itself. It has some great citrus recipes, but it mainly focuses on the cultivation and care of each variety. This book tells the grower what he/she can exactly expect to see, and how to best care for your tree. If there is ANYTHING this book lacks, it is more info on out-of-zone citrus gardening. For example, i live in NC and i have phenomenal success with all my trees in containers (i winter them in a "cheap" plastic greenhouse). That is my only criticism of this book---otherwise, all cultivar info is detailed and well illustrated!!!!

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great pictures, but could have been better, July 18, 2004

By 

S. Chiang "S. Chiang" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Citrus: Complete Guide to Selecting & Growing More Than 100 Varieties for California, Arizona Texas, the Gulf Coast and Florida (Illustrated) (Paperback)

The book is attractive and does contain a lot of information about different citrus varieties. My main criticism is that the Planting and Care section could have been much more substantial. Specifically, since the descriptions of various citrus ailments (poor nutrition, inappropriate watering, infection with pests) are not accompanied by photos of the symptoms, it makes it harder for the reader to figure out what these problems might actually look like. The black-and-white pen-and-ink drawings of pests are somewhat informative, but they're very limited compared to what might be conveyed by a photo.

Also, a few diagrams to help illustrate "good pruning" would have been great.

I'm not suggesting that this book should have been a definitive technical treatise on citrus, but I think it would have been more useful if more attention had been paid to what goes wrong when you're trying to grow citrus.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, December 3, 2009

By 

Benjamin J. Tudor - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Citrus: Complete Guide to Selecting & Growing More Than 100 Varieties for California, Arizona Texas, the Gulf Coast and Florida (Illustrated) (Paperback)

This book is a nice overview of citrus: it has a well-rounded history section, which I found very interesting, a brief summary of about 80 types of citrus, a section on rootstocks with positive and negative characteristics, and many other chapters on various topics.

I do agree with an earlier reviewer that calamondin is NOT a sweet fruit: the SKIN is light, thin, and can be described as sweet, but the actual fruit is something like a lemon or lime, with a flavor that is puzzling and new (to me, anyway). The rest of the information on the calamondin is accurate.

I wouldn't give the book one star, but it definitely was a disappointment for me in that I wanted more hard information on the particulars of growing citrus.

I'll give the book three stars. This was my first citrus book, given to me as a present, so I want to say that I have no comparison to other authors. The author of this book does, however provide a broad overview of citrus, from a beginner's perspective: a good section on pest control (but the author doesn't suggest the ultimate method for getting rid of scale: bareroot the tree and submerge everything but the roots in a horticultural oil solution contained in a rainbarrel or bathtub), and a few funny anecdotal stories. I did like the book.