citrus fertilizing
 

hi all

i just bought a small lemon plant and a small orange plant (am loathe to say tree at the moment because theyre not even a foot tall yet!) i have planted them in john inns number 2 compost, as advised - hope this is ok. i know that they are greedy as anything when it comes to water and fertilizer. i bought from a garden centre something called 'citrus drop by drop' basically, twist the cap off this little vial, turn upside down into the soil and for 15 days it slowly drips out a fertilizer into the soil.

i have just potted them in much larger pots - they were in 3x3inch ones previously. should i give them time to get used to their new environment before giving fertilizer? i dont expect fruit in the next year or anything, but i would like to give them a fighting chance!

thanks all :D

danny

citrus fertilizing
 

"danny22" wrote
i just bought a small lemon plant and a small orange plant (am loathe
to say tree at the moment because theyre not even a foot tall yet!) i
have planted them in john inns number 2 compost, as advised - hope this
is ok. i know that they are greedy as anything when it comes to water
and fertilizer. i bought from a garden centre something called 'citrus
drop by drop' basically, twist the cap off this little vial, turn upside
down into the soil and for 15 days it slowly drips out a fertilizer into
the soil.

i have just potted them in much larger pots - they were in 3x3inch ones
previously. should i give them time to get used to their new
environment before giving fertilizer? i dont expect fruit in the next
year or anything, but i would like to give them a fighting chance!


Whilst Citrus do not demand an acid soil they do prefer it so I always pot
our trees in Ericaceous Compost in which I add some bark chippings, as used
in Orchid compost, to aid drainage. You could use gravel but it would make
the pots heavy and having to move them about that is not wanted. Being in a
Hard Water area and sometimes using tap water it becomes more important to
use acid compost.
BTW The old Head Gardeners always put a sick citrus in ericaceous soil to
cheer it up.

The are greedy feeders but too much water at the roots will certainly kill
them, never use a water tray under citrus, let the pots drain through. If
trays are unavoidable raise the pot up so there is no possibility of the pot
sitting in water. Roots sitting in water is the biggest killer of citrus but
on the other hand they don't like it dry either, just moist is right in
winter.

For feed I use a handful of chicken manure pellets each spring together with
some sequestered iron and water with citrus feed every other watering,
especially in summer, flooding the pot through with clean rainwater between
feeds to ensure no build-up of salts. I use the separate summer and winter
feeds which you change with the clocks.

As your plants get bigger/older they will have ripe fruit, growing fruit and
flowers at the same time, strange plants that seem to ignore the seasons.
Oh, and the fruit can take almost 12 months to grow sometimes.

Of the ones we grow the Lemons and Tahiti lime grow excellent fruit just
like in the supermarket.

Ours spend the summer (from March till Oct last year) outside against our
South facing house wall and the winter in our clear twin walled plastic
roofed garage. A neighbour has left his large Lemon Tree out all winter and
I'll be interested to see how it does.

--
Regards
Bob Hobden

citrus fertilizing
 

On 8 Mar, 19:50, danny22 wrote:
hi all

i just bought a small lemon plant and a small orange plant (am loathe
to say tree at the moment because theyre not even a foot tall yet!) i
have planted them in john inns number 2 compost, as advised - hope this
is ok. i know that they are greedy as anything when it comes to water
and fertilizer. *i bought from a garden centre something called 'citrus
drop by drop' basically, twist the cap off this little vial, turn upside
down into the soil and for 15 days it slowly drips out a fertilizer into
the soil.

i have just potted them in much larger pots - they were in 3x3inch ones
previously. *should i give them time to get used to their new
environment before giving fertilizer? i dont expect fruit in the next
year or anything, but i would like to give them a fighting chance!

thanks all :D

danny

--
danny22

There is a good reason why the advice generally given is to repot a
plant into a container that is only a size or two larger than its
previous pot; unless the plant is extremely fast-growing, when moved
from a small to a large pot it will have large volumes of stagnant
compost in contact with its roots and those roots can start to rot.
Citrus have shallow roots, apparently. I had a lemon tree that I
potted on because I thought it couldn't possibly do well in so small a
container; about a year later when it was looking poorly, I took it
out of its pot to find that it had barely rooted into the new
compost.

John Innes No. 2 is a good base, but you could add composted bark to
the mix, and also perlite, which will help to aerate the compost.