pink grapefruit

Hi, I live in San Diego, zone 21 and am looking for a large pink or ruby red grapefruit. I currently have a 3 year old dwarf 'Star Ruby' but my husband and I eat a lot of grapefruit. Does anyone have a cultivar suggestion? Also, are there nurseries in the SD area that sell larger specimens? Thank you, Nancita

Hello Nancita,

I was asking around about your question and there seems to be two pieces of advice I keep getting.
1. Try and see what others in your neighborhood are growing and how they like it.
2. Try to get one that ripens at a little different time as your existing grapefruit so you can extend your enjoyment time:)

About large specimens - it seems that there's a big problem in southern California with the Asian Citrus Psyllids - here's an article about it bit.ly/75pAY0 - my understanding is all citrus being sold has to be inspected and sprayed, and each inspection has an expiration date so if the nursery doesn't sell them by that date the plants have to be re-inspected and re-sprayed before they can be sold. What does that mean to you? It means that the nurseries are less likely to keep a large stock of citrus on hand unless they're pretty sure they can sell them quickly (bummer for the consumer).

It sounds like your best option for a large specimen is to special order it from one of the local independent nurseries with a good reputation.

here's a good link to a bunch of citrus evaluations from UCR www.citrusvariety.ucr.edu/citrus/index.html

I hope I've helped
Mitch

MITCH has is all right. Because of the new Citrus Psyllid, it is difficult for retailers to keep stock very long. (3 months only)
Most can probably order 15 gallon size, perhaps larger, depending on the grower. These trees are more expenisve so sales are slower, on larger trees. Re-treating Citrus in nurseries is quite expensive and time consuming (USDA has to be involved), no one wants to do that if they don't have to.