Yuzu citrus wanted

ClissAT

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Anyone know where I can buy a grafted yuzu citrus?
I tried all the online places I knew of but all had the same story.......
No yuzu till 2020!

Or maybe someone has a yuzu growing or knows of one that I can get a few seeds from, please.

I suspect all available stock is being redirected to commercial growers now that the fruit has become popular in restaurant culture and has a high value.
 

Mark

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I have a young tree that I got from our local Bunnings 2 years back - only ever saw one tree. It hasn't fruited yet and is quite a slow grower so I'm hoping it picks up this summer.
 

ClissAT

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Yuzu are slow growers Mark. They will take between 4-8 yrs to fruit depending on whether the tree is a graft or seedling.
If you wish to prune it to encourage it to grow better, I would love the prunings please. I will drive down to get them.
I can graft them onto my lemon tree until I get better root stock growing.
 

Mark

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I would love the prunings please
Yes sure but there's nothing to prune at the moment... I'll take a pic tomorrow (if I can remember) and post it here to show you what I mean.

As soon as it's cranking I'll let you know, and if you still don't have a tree you can try grafting your own - I'd like to see that!
 

Mark

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Check out this seller http://forever-seeds.com/seeds.html not sure how "legit" they are so can't vouch for them but they do sell Yuzu seeds and intend to have plants ready to sell by March 2019 - might be worth a look.
 

DeeU

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WARNING Stay away from Forever Seeds (www.forever-seeds.com): Please don't buy from forever seeds. Or only purchase if you can go into their shop and physically pick up the items yourself. I purchased one of their 'pre-order' Yuzu and Sudachi Lime plants online in February promised to deliver in Nov and Dec. Now they are not answering the phone, not replying to emails and ignoring voice messages. They have literally taken money and disappeared. So horrible to think a company like that would do that at a time like this. Just wanted to share this so no one else has to go through what I have with them.
 

GreenThumbsUp

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I think a better website will be www.citrusmen.com.au. they are trust worthy and reliable I've bought my yuzu, buddhas hand and verigated calamunsi off them and arrived on time they will also up date you if the package will be late on arrival. They got yuzu and sudachi plants too go check them out. Highly recommend them.
 

DeeU

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@GreenThumbsUp 100% agree. I also bought one from the Citrus Men, they advertise when they had availability and only took money at that point and it was delivered in a few weeks and 7 months later already has four yuzu growing on it. I know I should have cut them all off in the first fruiting year, but couldn't bring myself to do it so only got rid of half. Now waiting until they have Sudachi lime available and dwarf finger lime which looks to sell out fast!

Overnight I went to Forever-seeds facebook page and posted asking about my order, they deleted it. We did this back and fourth until I think they realised I was not going to let them get away with it and this morning have seen I've been refunded. They send me a story about how impacted they have been with Covid, which usually I would have sympathy for, but when you read their reviews and see others have been getting scammed for over three years in exactly the same way, its hard to believe how true their story is. I consider myself one of the luckier ones and really feel sorry for others that have lost hundreds of dollars.
 

GreenThumbsUp

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@DeeU 🤣 well they deserve the harassment for not sending you the items that you ordered specifically. I've never bought anything off them so I can't really share the same experience with you, but I CAN share that same experience with you about getting thing from citrus men. They are a great website to go browsing for availability for the specific citrus. My next one from them will have to the finger lime and the desert lime. My garden is so over filled with pots at the moment I don't know where to put them lol. BTW I'm a raised bed and container gardener 😄.
If you like other fruit trees I can also highly recommend this website www.woodbridgefruittrees.com.au. They are responsive when you email them, don't really expect pronto, he'll try to answer your questions as soon as he can type of thing whilst on the farm/nursery. They mainly do apples and stone fruits if I remembered correctly.
 
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Lush Green Acres

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@DeeU sorry to hear you had so much troubles getting your Yuzu. If they refunded you then they honored the sale right, so how did they scam you and what is your warning about? Just saying! A family business that does the right thing, doesn't deserve to have they name dragged through the dirt especially when they refunded you. We have ALL been through very hard times over the last 2 years of the pandemic, EVERYONE has been affected, why would you think this is a lie, really.

I would have to strongly DISAGREE with you, as they have been my number one go to online nursery shop for all rare trees and seeds and I have had only great dealings with Forever Seeds www.forever-seeds.com. I have bought from them for nearly 10 years now. I did order their pre paid Grafted Yuzu & Sudachi trees as well nearly 2 years ago and they were sent out as expected for delivery in Jan 2021. They were beautiful healthy trees when they arrived and have just flowered and fruited the winter just gone , almost straight away in the first year of growing them ( they do say to remove the flowers or fruits for the first few seasons to get the tree to foliate and grow quicker for bigger crops in the future though, hard to do considering impatience to get fruits now ). Also they always through in free gifts with each of my orders and I always get more than I pay for. Saves me heaps of money on plants.

I find it difficult to see how you had such bad dealings with them. I CAN only share that I always have exceptional service and email communication about our orders and once sent they usually arrived express post 24hrs after sending. They are responsive with after sales service too and helped me out with any problems I had with growing info. I couldn't recommend them highly enough. All our friends that have also bought from them too have nothing but awesome experiences as well.
I have a lovey property filled with rare trees thanks to the helpful & friendly team at Forever Seeds and cant wait to add to my collection as soon as I can.
I will be looking to their website first for my next plant purchase.........what a wonderful and rewarding hobby & also good for your health and immune system, growing your own food!
 

Mandy Onderwater

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@DeeU sorry to hear you had so much troubles getting your Yuzu. If they refunded you then they honored the sale right, so how did they scam you and what is your warning about? Just saying! A family business that does the right thing, doesn't deserve to have they name dragged through the dirt especially when they refunded you. We have ALL been through very hard times over the last 2 years of the pandemic, EVERYONE has been affected, why would you think this is a lie, really.

I would have to strongly DISAGREE with you, as they have been my number one go to online nursery shop for all rare trees and seeds and I have had only great dealings with Forever Seeds www.forever-seeds.com. I have bought from them for nearly 10 years now. I did order their pre paid Grafted Yuzu & Sudachi trees as well nearly 2 years ago and they were sent out as expected for delivery in Jan 2021. They were beautiful healthy trees when they arrived and have just flowered and fruited the winter just gone , almost straight away in the first year of growing them ( they do say to remove the flowers or fruits for the first few seasons to get the tree to foliate and grow quicker for bigger crops in the future though, hard to do considering impatience to get fruits now ). Also they always through in free gifts with each of my orders and I always get more than I pay for. Saves me heaps of money on plants.

I find it difficult to see how you had such bad dealings with them. I CAN only share that I always have exceptional service and email communication about our orders and once sent they usually arrived express post 24hrs after sending. They are responsive with after sales service too and helped me out with any problems I had with growing info. I couldn't recommend them highly enough. All our friends that have also bought from them too have nothing but awesome experiences as well.
I have a lovey property filled with rare trees thanks to the helpful & friendly team at Forever Seeds and cant wait to add to my collection as soon as I can.
I will be looking to their website first for my next plant purchase.........what a wonderful and rewarding hobby & also good for your health and immune system, growing your own food!
Keep it friendly! People are allowed their opinions (as are you, of course).

Everyone experiences things differently. Chances are they make mistakes too and if that is her sole experience, that's what she'll think of them. I would likely feel the same way if that happened to me.
I'm glad you did have good experiences with them, though. Personally I haven't dealt with buying seeds online as I have a nursery nearby and I've been quite successful with what I've bought from Bunnings as well.
 

DeeU

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Hi @Lush Green Acres. It's great if you had a wonderful experience with them, unfortunately that could not be further from my experience which I'll share and hopefully will give you insight into why I felt the way I did. They refunded the sale because I was not going to give up - but I know of others who did and lost their money which was so sad to read as they spent hundreds of dollars which they won't see again.

* I ordered in Feb, and sent an email to them sharing my excitement and asked a couple of questions - no response. I thought, that's fine, they are busy and not everyone has the time to answer questions. Then the delivery was promised to be November so just thought I'd wait until then.
* I waited until Nov and sent an email asking when they would expect to be sending them out - no response
* I sent another email a week later Nov to follow up - No response
* I sent another the following week saying it was concerning not hearing back and wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are just busy and if things are delayed that is fine, just let me know - no response
* I called and left a message on their VM 3 times - no response
* I thought perhaps Social was a better way to reach them so I sent them a private FB message - No response
* I then posted to their FB page - Post was deleted
* Seeing that they had the time to read and delete social public messages, but not reply to customers, the penny dropped that something was definitely not right.
* By this time I was now angry. I then asked them on their FB page why they had taken my money and were not responding and why they deleted my post. I decided to add this to a few of their posts to see what they would do. They then deleted each post and still no response.
* Even angered more, I thought if by re-posting this to their page, at least one person sees it and saves them from my horrible experience then I'll do it, so did this again and was determined to do this for as long as it took - They deleted all the posts again.

ONLY then when they knew I was not going to give up, did they respond and refund my money.

I'm not saying they didn't go through hard times, we all know Covid made life incredibly difficult for everyone, especially businesses, but the least they could have done, at a minimum, is respond to customers. Especially if they have taken their money. I tried every avenue, gave them the benefit of the doubt for the longest time, but after taking my money, being ignored each time, and seeing the only action from them was to delete comments when I was asking about my order in public is horrible. If they are genuinely too busy to respond there are a multitude of options, have a message on a home page explaining the situation, add a quick social post communicating they are busy and there will be delays in responses, change their voice message to say they are too busy to return calls - there were so many easy options to do something and not leave a sour taste in customers mouths. But going radio silent and then only actioning once it was public did not feel like an honest approach. Additionally, if there are no issues, why delete posts, none of them were offensive at all, and if anything, if another customer was able to see a response that they are delayed, then that would also help others.

Amongst all the above, when my suspicious were starting to set in, I did my own research by googling reviews for forever-seeds, and I saw was not the only one to have had this experience, and also its been happening for years, even pre-covid. There are so many sad stories if you want to take the time to read them here in the Google reviews section on the right. There are other gardening/growing forums which have more similar stories starting from years back.

I don't understand why they require upfront payment when Yuzu and Sudachi are highly prized and always sells out in a flash. I was able to purchase a Yuzu from The Citrus Men (also a family business) who advertised when they had stock, and when they sold out (which happened really fast) they sold out, and they notified customers to keep an eye out for an email when the next batch is ready. They also responded to questions I had within 24 hours. It's experiences like this that will generate customer relationships, trust and repeat business, but there is no way I'll even consider going near forever-seeds after that experience.

This long winded post was what I was trying to avoid in the beginning, my intention was simply to share my experience with other gardeners, as I know the anticipation and excitement of purchasing and expecting a rare fruits to arrive, and to be met with that experience was so sad. If my post meant that even one fellow grower didn't have to go through that, then that is great. And on the flip side, if other growers read your experience and are inspired to purchase from them, then that is fine too. I just hope their experiences are as positive as yours.
 
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DeeU

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@GreenThumbsUp I just saw your post from Dec 10th. Thanks for sharing! I just took a look at www.woodbridgefruittrees.com.au and it looks great. Very tempting, but I'm still recovering from the loss of my peaches and fejoa last season to fruit fly, so decided to see if I can work around them this season before buying any more stone fruits. I've tried exclusion netting around the whole trees, and they look to be growing with no fallen fruit yet so fingers crossed they didn't sneak in during the big storms which blew open a few holes in the net.

And I totally hear you on the problem of an overfilled garden, it's a problem isn't it?! but at least it's a healthy problem! haha ;)
 

Mandy Onderwater

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@GreenThumbsUp I just saw your post from Dec 10th. Thanks for sharing! I just took a look at www.woodbridgefruittrees.com.au and it looks great. Very tempting, but I'm still recovering from the loss of my peaches and fejoa last season to fruit fly, so decided to see if I can work around them this season before buying any more stone fruits. I've tried exclusion netting around the whole trees, and they look to be growing with no fallen fruit yet so fingers crossed they didn't sneak in during the big storms which blew open a few holes in the net.

And I totally hear you on the problem of an overfilled garden, it's a problem isn't it?! but at least it's a healthy problem! haha ;)
I hope your plants will fare better with the netting!
If you're a little handy (and the material is mostly okay) you could try sowing up some of the holes?
 

DeeU

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I hope your plants will fare better with the netting!
If you're a little handy (and the material is mostly okay) you could try sowing up some of the holes?
Thanks for the tip @Mandy Onderwater for the time being I've got some stainless steel pegs holding them together, but I will def try that post season once I can lay it flat. I tried to give them as much slack as possible but with all this garden friendly weather we have been getting in Sydney the trees have been growing so fast poking new holes through the netting, not sure if you or anyone else has any tips on how to work with this or if I should have put the net on a better way to accommodate? Thanks!
 

Mandy Onderwater

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Thanks for the tip @Mandy Onderwater for the time being I've got some stainless steel pegs holding them together, but I will def try that post season once I can lay it flat. I tried to give them as much slack as possible but with all this garden friendly weather we have been getting in Sydney the trees have been growing so fast poking new holes through the netting, not sure if you or anyone else has any tips on how to work with this or if I should have put the net on a better way to accommodate? Thanks!
I'm not entirely sure as I've never used netting myself, but people around here have. It might be a different material. I know some people trim their trees to halt the outward growth for a little bit. Others have been making sure to keep moving the nets whilst it's growing.
Most of those sound high maintenance and the trees I see don't look like they get looked at daily at all. I suspect a different material perhaps? Or even a way of hanging it over them. Do you tie it down at the bottom or hang weights or..? (Depending on size I've seen different methods)
 
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