# Can't find Kumquats anywhere. Tariffs? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 3, 2026, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344 "2026-02-03T17:52:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2026, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/21 "2026-02-05T13:23:07Z")
But what about kumquat and whiskey ice cream? ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2026, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/22 "2026-02-05T13:36:40Z")
Now, you get my interest. I am in possession of a Kenwood mixer with an ice cream bowl (similar to a vacuum flask, but filled with liquid in the double layer) . You stick the bowl in the freezer for several hours to get really cold before using it. As you make your ice-cream, the ultra-chilled bowl cools the mixture which speeds up the formation of ice-crystal free ice-cream. With and without that machine, I have made sage, parsley and honey ice cream, coriander and banana ice cream, and a bunch of other weird combinations. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2026, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/23 "2026-02-05T13:47:21Z")
Or you could call the Heladeria and have it delivered, you are just across that small pond called “South Atlantic” and a bit to the south 😃 ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2026, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/24 "2026-02-05T18:16:57Z")
I must say, that sounds awfully intriguing. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2026, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/25 "2026-02-05T18:27:17Z")
My mother in law loves it, we used to buy it for her in an heladeria near our home because it’s not easy to find. It’s kind of too weird for me, but my tastes on ice cream are very conservative. (for most of my life nobody bothered to ask me what flavor I wanted because I always had strawberry and only strawberry, lately I’ve known to deviate a bit and ask for strawberry and banana or strawberry and banana split) ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2026, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/26 "2026-02-05T21:26:13Z")
When I was a kid, my mother would buy jars of pickled kumquats. I remember them being sweet more than anything else, similar to pickled watermelon rind. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2026, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/27 "2026-02-06T00:35:28Z")
Man, I had not had any kumquats for a while. And then, this thread… so I obtained some. The nicely ripe ones, with the deep orange, candy-sweet peel were good. The lesser ones were OK, but still oddly satisfying. For instant ice cream, I recommend food-grade liquid nitrogen. Never tried it with kumquats, but that stuff will freeze anything (my last batch was strawberries and vanilla) ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2026, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/28 "2026-02-06T04:50:23Z")
Now, thanks to this thread, because my id doesn’t care whether it makes any kind of sense, I want to plant a kumquat tree. To hell with not liking kumquats - if I had my own tree, I’d learn to like them! At present, our citrus trees include Tahitian lime, naval orange, tangerine, calamansi, makrut (kaffir) lime, and Meyer lemon. But no kumquat or finger lime. I think I must fix this. Talk to me again in 5 years. I may be eating my own kumquat marmalade. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2026, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/29 "2026-02-06T05:05:00Z")
> [@CairoCarol](#): > > I want to plant a kumquat tree. I’m envisioning a little bonsai orange tree that grows little bonsai kumquats. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2026, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/30 "2026-02-06T14:46:28Z")
> [@CairoCarol](#): > > Talk to me again in 5 years. I may be eating my own kumquat marmalade. This sounds interesting, and the kind of thing I can give my mum as a gift - she is a consummate devourer of all sorts of citrus in the form of marmalade. I might add some lime or lemon peel to get the citric acid ratio high enough, though. Kumquats seem a little too sweet. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2026, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/31 "2026-02-06T14:52:46Z")
I am by no means a bonsai expert, and certainly not a fruit bonsai expert, but I am fairly sure bonsai trees present regular size fruit. I think they just produce a very small amount of normal size fruit. The idea of Lamarckism has been fairly well debunked. Although… It would be cool. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2026, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/32 "2026-02-11T10:12:22Z")
When I lived in Taiwan, I was in the area famous for kumquats. I hadn’t tried them before moving to Taiwan but as my wife loves them we always had them around. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2026, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/33 "2026-02-11T10:22:03Z")
> [@CairoCarol](#): > > Now, thanks to this thread, because my id doesn’t care whether it makes any kind of sense, I want to plant a kumquat tree. To hell with not liking kumquats - if I had my own tree, I’d learn to like them! I was in Perth, Australia, for extended periods of time in the 1990s. I stayed with hosts in a Perth suburb. I’d need to go to the corner store, and I’d ask if anybody needed anything. Yes, they wanted a couple of lemons. Huh? Lemons? From the corner store? Cigarettes, candy, potato chips, magazines, bread, for sure; but fresh lemons? “No, just pick them from the house that has a lemon tree growing next to their fence.” Well, I did. Nice fresh lemons, from the tree branches that hung over the pedestrian pathway. Moral of the story: don’t plant your kumquats near the fence. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2026, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/34 "2026-02-11T16:49:51Z")
> [@Spoons](#): > > Moral of the story: don’t plant your kumquats near the fence. As a resident of an agriculturally-oriented tropical island, I sure can relate to that. None of our fruit-producing trees are along the road, so no one helps themselves to our bounty. But it’s an issue for those who do have produce visible from the street. (One friend loses lots of his roadside avocados every year to nighttime theft.) Our neighbor on one side has an oversupply of lilikoi (passion fruit) draping his fence, and one on the other has a breadfruit tree right next to the street. We asked the lilikoi neighbor, who we were acquainted with, if we could buy some of his fruit. Of course he just said “help yourselves!” since he had tons. (Alas he has moved away and the house is now empty - the untended vines are not producing much without being cared for.) We don’t know the breadfruit people (not even sure who owns the tree, as the driveway leads back to three different houses). Also, there aren’t insane amounts of fruit like there periodically are on the lilikoi vines - just enough to be a nice crop for one family. Every time I run, I see a couple of ripening breadfruit along the street just begging to be snatched by a passing car, or by … me. Tempting though it is, I won’t take the breadfruit. But each time I go by, I look to see if the breadfruit is still there. A few more days of ripening, and I’m sure it won’t be. The only question, to which I will never know the answer, is who got it. If the breadfruit falls to the ground though and is sitting on the edge of the road, I’m taking it. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2026, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/35 "2026-02-12T00:08:26Z")
I love kumquats. They used to have them every in-season at Trader Joe’s. It’s been a while since they’ve had them. What they do have now, though, is gooseberries - which they cruelly place in the same spot that they used to place the kumquats. In the same containers, the two look very much alike. So every week when I pass that section my heart does a quick leap until I remember that, no, those are not kumquats. Le sigh… I have no idea what a gooseberry is, but I decided to try some and, damn, they are pretty good! So there’s that. > [@CairoCarol](#): > > For anyone who feels sad because they never thought about kumquats before, and now they want one, I shall offer a competing view: Kumquats are not “good” at all. Strongly disagree, the ones I’ve had were quite good. > [@CairoCarol](#): > > Now, thanks to this thread, because my id doesn’t care whether it makes any kind of sense, I want to plant a kumquat tree. To hell with not liking kumquats - if I had my own tree, I’d learn to like them! > > At present, our citrus trees include Tahitian lime, naval orange, tangerine, calamansi, makrut (kaffir) lime, and Meyer lemon. But no kumquat or finger lime. I think I must fix this. Here’s my tale. We have citrus trees. Orange and grapefruit. They produce way more than we can consume or give away. The un-eaten/un-picked ones fall on the ground and attract rodents. So I tried cutting them back. A little at first but in the end, waaay back. It only made them grow back faster. It’s like my yard has some magic citrus-growing dirt. So, cut to, I’m walking through Lowe’s nursery and they had a kumquat tree for sale. Just loaded with ripe kumquats. So I think, ‘I love kumquats, my yard loves citrus trees’, what could go wrong? You see where this is going, right? The first year it produced exactly 1 kumquat. So I consulted some experts and apparently even thought my tree flowers, it is not being pollenated. So the next flowering season I get out there with a Q-tip and hand-pollenate the blooms. The tree is only about 3 feet tall but it still took an hour. An hour I’ll not get back, mind you. This year’s grand total - 5. Growing your own kumquats is the devil’s work > [@Manduck](#): > > > [@pkbites](#): > > > > Was just there yesterday. No dice. > > But did they have kumquats? I chortled. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2026, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/36 "2026-02-12T01:52:56Z")
But I doubt that liquid nitrogen alone would get you something like this: [![](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3siy5gcqa34ugidu2uecpj4h/bafkreid74oe73caeb67w7e7ammlfrw2vychi45ivdqpx6hw3hwlqor3xdq@jpeg) ](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3siy5gcqa34ugidu2uecpj4h/bafkreid74oe73caeb67w7e7ammlfrw2vychi45ivdqpx6hw3hwlqor3xdq@jpeg) ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2026, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/37 "2026-02-12T01:58:13Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > I love kumquats. They used to have them every in-season at Trader Joe’s. It’s been a while since they’ve had them They generally were a winter item, November to March. But I’ve found none anywhere in SE Wisconsin this year. I was forced to order some from a supplier on Amazon. Way overpriced and I don’t know if I’ll actually get them. They’ve changed the delivery date 3 times already. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2026, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/38 "2026-02-12T02:01:31Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > apparently even thought my tree flowers, it is not being pollenated. Maybe kumquats are one of those trees that doesn’t self-pollinate - meaning, you need two of them. Nutmeg is like that. So we bought two nutmeg trees. One died. So we bought another tree. Another one died. So our nutmeg production is even worse than your kumquat production. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2026, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/39 "2026-02-12T02:04:19Z")
> [@CairoCarol](#): > > So our nutmeg production is even worse than your kumquat production. Most years I don’t go through one full nutmeg pod. I can’t imagine having an entire tree (or two). ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2026, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344/40 "2026-02-12T04:15:17Z")
> [@needscoffee](#): > > Most years I don’t go through one full nutmeg pod. I can’t imagine having an entire tree (or two). We are maintaining a property that will outlast us. Nutmeg trees take at least 5-10 years after seedling planting to produce. We’re old (67 and 69 as I type) so we do not expect to harvest nutmeg ourselves. It’s just a cool investment in a future we won’t see - but we hope someone will someday love this land as we do. Along those lines, someone (we will never know who) planted a [Bismarck Palm](https://www.google.com/search?as_st=y&hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=Bismarck+palm&as_oq=&as_eq=&imgar=&imgcolor=&imgtype=&cr=&as_sitesearch=&as_filetype=&tbs=&udm=2#sv=CAMSVhoyKhBlLWE2Q0lDMEhPazZJd3hNMg5hNkNJQzBIT2s2SXd4TToOTWdKVTl3MWl6MWFsd00gBCocCgZtb3NhaWMSEGUtYTZDSUMwSE9rNkl3eE0YADABGAcgsZDF0QUwAkoIEAIYAiACKAI) long before we bought the property. It is now gorgeous. We thank whoever thought forward for putting it there. ETA: I’ll post a photo of said Bismarck Palm but it is dark in Hawai’i at the moment … I’ll come back to this thread and post a photo tomorrow, if my aging brain doesn’t forget. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-find-kumquats-anywhere-tariffs/1027344.md?page=3)