Lucie Monk Carter
My father planted a dozen satsuma trees in our Covington, Louisiana, backyard in 1957; there, they produced profusely each fall. At the kitchen window he would chuckle, watching neighbor kids emerge through the bamboo to grab some. He was glad to share. If pranksters thought they were getting away with something, then more the fun.
At our family’s feed store we sold satsuma trees, along with navels and kumquats, sourced from the Becnel family, Plaquemines Parish’s citrus dynasty. We sipped on satsuma mimosas during holiday meals. As a college freshman, I returned to Waco, Texas, from Thanksgiving break with my little red Falcon’s backseat buried in satsumas. New friends appeared at my dorm room door having heard of “amazing fruit” from Louisiana.
When you mention satsumas in conversation north of, say, Dumas, Arkansas, reactions are of two types. One is incredulity as if you speak a foreign tongue, which is indeed the case. The word stems from a southern Japanese dialect. The second reaction, or some variation, is “Satsumas! My aunt brings us a bushel from New Iberia every Thanksgiving.”
Citrus farmers and county agents across the upper Gulf Coast hope someday for a third, nonplussed reaction: “I got mine at Walmart.”
“We saw these things selling off the back of a pickup, so we stopped,” recalled Franklin, “and they were just the best citrus I’d ever tasted.”
Through production, marketing and improved cold-hardiness propagation, industry members expect that satsumas will one day become commonplace to consumers much further north than we fortunate ones between Houston and Jacksonville.
Satsumas in the United States date to the 1870s, when General Robert Van Valkenburgh, former U.S. minister to Japan, returned to northern Florida with his wife Anna; as a souvenir, Anna brought home mandarin trees, which she dubbed “satsumas” after the Satsuma province, now part of Kagoshima prefecture. The region in Japan shares latitudinal lines, very roughly, with towns in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas all named Satsuma. For better or for worse, climates are similar. A week after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Buras, Typhoon Nabi hit Kagoshima causing serious damage and twenty-nine deaths.
According to Lee Rouse, East Baton Rouge Parish assistant extension agent, an estimated 1,100 acres of citrus, mostly navel oranges and satsumas, are planted in twenty-five Louisiana parishes. Such acreage pales compared to rice, cotton, soybeans or sugar cane, but is significant: forty percent of the sixty-four parishes have active citrus farming. The most popular satsuma variety is Owari, followed by Brown Select, he said.
Upper Gulf Coast summers and cooler falls produce a signature sweetness compared to central Florida or southern Texas, he said. In other words, grapefruit like the Rio Grande Valley heat. Satsumas do not.
Cooler climes have risks. According to Rouse, satsumas generally tolerate temperatures of 26 or 27 degrees overnight. Prolonged periods are a concern. He advises draping backyard trees with blankets touching the ground so ambient ground warmth drifts upward.
Lucie Monk Carter
In recent decades, consumers nationwide have been introduced to Cuties or Halos. Cousins to the larger satsuma, they are marketing names for Clementine mandarins from central California. Both are seedless and a cinch to open, though satsuma growers say their fruit tastes better and is easiest to peel—“zippable” per one nurseryman—with rind and fruit pre-separated inside.
“[Satsumas] are fantastic backyard trees because they have few problems,” said Rouse. Leaf miners, like moths, may cause unsightly curling but don’t affect the tree’s production. Sap-sucking scale insects are tempered by organic options. And Orange Dog caterpillars, which become swallowtail butterflies, leave bird-dropping-like residue—but it causes only nominal damage.
The disease citrus greening, or “HLB” (Huanglongbing), seen in Asia early last century, has appeared this century in California, Florida, Texas and now, Louisiana—causing some alarm for growers. Best advice: be on the lookout and connect with your agricultural extension service.
Lowndes County, Georgia, extension agent Jacob Price is another satsuma enthusiast. In 2013, he held a meeting to introduce citrus farming, attended by nearly one hundred farmers from southern Georgia, northern Florida, and Alabama. The movement is still underway. Price expects the 2018 Georgia commercial citrus crop to be half a million pounds, mostly satsumas. “This year will be interesting to see where [satsumas] are sold beyond produce stands,” he said. Large farmers have pre-existing vegetable operations with broker relationships and packing houses in place. Some will go to schools and some to Atlanta, he predicts. Regarding traditional Florida citrus country and satsumas, Price agrees with Rouse. “Satsumas need cold weather to make the sugar content go up. When you grow them down there, they just don’t taste as good.”
[Recipe: Chocolate Tartlets with Satsuma Curd]
Joe Franklin, owner of Franklin Farms in Statesboro, Georgia, is determined to make satsumas as popular as the state’s peaches. He discovered them on a St. Bernard Parish fishing trip in 2009. “We saw these things selling off the back of a pickup, so we stopped,” recalled Franklin, “and they were just the best citrus I’d ever tasted.” He sourced two hundred trees from Star Nursery in Belle Chasse before returning home and now has 4,600 trees in production. Last year, he sold his satsumas at five different weekend produce markets in the area. “This year we’ll be in ten to twelve markets on Saturdays and Sundays around Atlanta, plus one in Chattanooga,” he said.
A few independent grocers in Georgia will be selling his satsumas as well. He has his eye on chain supermarkets and a mail-order operation for 2019, as his trees mature and increase production.
According to Ricky Becnel, Jr. a fifth-generation member of the famous Louisiana citrus family who proudly counts his grandson as the seventh generation, over twenty thousand satsuma trees per year go into production in Georgia. He should know; many come from his nurseries in Louisiana and Texas.
Becnels have been farming along the Mississippi since 1850 and growing temperate zone citrus almost as long. Becnel said the climate and rich sediment along the river are incomparable for farming. Some family members are in fruit production and others, like Becnel, are on the nursery side. He operates the Saxon Becnel & Sons Nursery in Belle Chasse, producing mainstays like the Owari and Brown varieties for farmers and retailers while working with horticulturalists on new varieties. Becnel is exclusive rights-holder for the new Arcticfrost that tolerates freezing temperatures as low as 12 degrees.
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“We know it will be more cold tolerant but we don’t know exactly how much yet,” said Becnel. Another variety Becnel likes is the Texas Miho known for early ripening, thereby extending the harvest at the front end.
Following Hurricane Katrina, Becnel opened a second location in Orange, Texas. That backup has become twice the size of the original. “We almost lost the family nursery in Katrina,” said Becnel. “Texas has welcomed us with open arms.”
“When I was a kid, my dad would say ‘We don’t know it all,’” recalled Becnel. “‘Weather is forever changing, you have to adapt.’ Now I’m 56. We still don’t know it all.” Such humility runs common among citrus growers and county agents from Orange, Texas, to Statesboro, Georgia. They hope thousands living well north of them will someday recall sweet memories at the mention of the word “satsumas.”
