2 Simple Tips | When To Fertilize Your Citrus Trees

in today's episode i'm going to show you everything you need to know about citrus fertilization and also when is the best time to fertilize them so i have a few citrus right here uh we have oranges lemons i have some limes uh comp quads i have a lot of kumquats actually maybe a few pomelo left and mandarin tangerine all kinds here in arizona citrus grows like weeds they're they are very easy to grow in our area now and now i know a lot of you watching right now you probably grow your citrus in containers and you are wondering what is the best fertilizer for your citrus and when is the best time to fertilize them so let's go ahead and get started with when is the best time to fertilize them now there are two ways you can actually fertilize your citrus the first one is going to be you can set at schedule and fertilizing every year around the same time or you can look at your trees so let's go ahead and start with the first one put in your trees on a feeding and schedule now that will depend on how often you water your plants so if you have your citrus in a container you are most likely going to be watering very often here in my area my daily temperatures right now are over 100 degrees so what that means is these containers right here are drying 50 twice a day so guess what if we follow the 50 rule which i explained in another video in details that means i'm watering these trees twice a day because they're drying out on me twice a day 50 very easy rule to follow during the growing season in the winter time you follow the 75 rule another thing you got to keep in mind is the citrus right now are actively growing so they are eating just like you when you go on a run for a few miles you come back home you are very thirsty and you probably get hungry too right same thing with plants they are actively growing when are you going to fertilizing if you want to set your schedule so let's say you just got your citrus you brought it home and you don't know if you need to fertilize or not the first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna look at it do you have a lot of new leaves if you do the nursery probably already fertilize the plant that you have and you don't you don't need to do anything now let's say you have your citrus for a little while and you're not noticing any new growth and you know it's not a water issue you know it's not the middle of the winter and you know for sure 100 your tree is supposed to be growing right now so at that point what you can do is you can go ahead and start feeding your plant and setting it on a feeding schedule so what i do here is i feed them most times once i start seeing new growth at the beginning of the season when the night temperatures are warming up usually around you know 60 70 degrees i start seeing new leaves i see new flowers and i feed my plants and that is option number one now how often are you gonna feed them well that depends on what kind of fertilizer you use the fertilizer that i use here for most of our container plants it's a slow release fertilizer as this one right here the numbers the mpk is relevant don't even pay attention to that because if you do you're going to get confused and you're going to buy into all the sales gimmicks that you see everywhere online and your plans are going to suffer if you start emphasizing on the numbers if you're going to use a synthetic fertilizer the only thing that i recommend you to do is get a fertilizer that has a slow release like this one right here this one is pelletized so the fertilizer is inside the pellets now the way i fertilize my plants is you get a handful it comes with a scoop and the bag will usually tell you how much to put in the containers and then you just throw it in there and you're done every time you fertilize that fertilizer will actually get released into the potting mix a little bit at a time every single time you water because anything that mixes with water your plant is able to eat and this fertilizer is also heat activated meaning it's not supposed to release fertilizer when the temperatures are cold i'm not sure how accurate that is so i don't buy into it and that's why i don't fertilize my plants in the winter time because they're not growing anyway so i don't want to waste fertilizer now this fertilizer right here is a slow release and here in arizona remember i'm watering twice a day right now i only fertilizing once a year and my citrus grow great they burn fruit and i don't have any issues at all so as long as your plants are growing and giving you fruits it's okay so once a year for me here in arizona now let's say you live somewhere else i don't know where the temperatures are going to be hotter than my area or where you're going to be watering more often than i do here but let's say you do so the more you water your plants the more you are going to be leeching the uh food away from your plant because whatever mixes with water is what your plant needs so if you water constantly you're always flushing all all the food away from the root ball of your plant you're leeching all the nutrients away from it so you may have to fertilize more often but that's the reason why i like the slow release fertilizer simply because i just put it in the container and my plant gets fed every single time that i water just a tiny bit and that's how you want it [Music] you will not be able to burn your plants i have not killed a single plant from over fertilizing it not a single one out of thousands of plants that i have probably killed unintentionally just learning because nobody taught me everything that i teach you on every single video that i put out guys everything that i put out there is personal experience and some common sense but that's the reason why i like the fertilizer if it's a slow release extremely hard to overdo it just follow the instructions i lost a little scoop that comes with it but normally for a three or five gallon or even a seven gallon container all you need is about half a scoop which i've been doing this for a little while so normally i can just tell how much that is now let's say you have some other fertilizer that is nice slow release if you have a few plants that's easier to do so the way you're gonna do that is you're gonna read the directions which is usually on the back somewhere and then in the back it's gonna tell you you know quarter of a scoop uh it's gonna tell you um you know half a scoop uh it's sometimes it's gonna go by weight so whatever the instructions tell you what you are going to do is you're gonna cut it in half to a quarter so what that means is if the instructions say you need to use a half a scoop whatever scoop it comes with pour whatever surface area then what you're gonna do is you're going to use a quarter of a scoop now the reason i recommend to do that especially with instant release fertilizers is if you put your fertilizer in the container you water it in that fertilizer will dissolve in the water immediately and then your plant will start eating it immediately the problem with those fertilizers is it releases everything at once and your plant does not know when to stop eating it so what happens is it keeps eating eating eating and then it blows up so just like you would like you would if you kept eating when you're full plants do not know when they're full because in nature food does not happen in abundance like that naturally but yeah just you know cut the dosage to half to a quarter and then just fertilize your plants if you're going to use any other fertilizer that is nice slow release if you want to go the organic way i have another video specifically talking about how to fertilize your container plants organically it's a little more labor intensive and i don't do it personally simply because i have hundreds and hundreds of plants and i don't have the labor um to help me fertilize my plants on a weekly basis if i'm gonna do it the organic way and if i had to do that then i will have to raise my prices and then obviously people are not going to want to pay it so this is the best way to do it and if you have container plans that brings us to option number two and that is you need to pay attention to your plants and you need to look for a few science signs which i'm about to show you so the other way to know when to fertilize your plants is by simply looking at them it's going to be very difficult for you to do that especially if you only have a few plants or if you have just started growing them when you spend time with plants you get to know them and the more time you spend with them you will get to notice changes and needs your plants are trying to tell you now my plants that you see in front of me i have not fertilized in about a year and a half yes i'm being lazy i forgot i put it off it is what it is i know these plants are overdue to get fed now one of the signs that i've noticed immediately for the past at least three months is they have not been growing as fast as they normally do i know a hundred percent it's not a water issue because they're getting the same amount of water they're saying everything they did last year in the year before in the year before when they used to grow way faster they get in the same amount of sunlight everything is the same the only thing that is not the same is i was lazy and i did not feed them some of the plants are still flushing slowly they're still growing but i've noticed a lot of the plants are showing the main sign that most plants are going to show you when they need food and that is yellowing of the leaves now there are many different reasons why your leaves are going to turn yellow i have another video on citrus specifically why the main reasons actually why your leaves are going to turn yellow but one of those reasons is going to be they need food the reason they turn yellow especially if you start seeing the veins of your leaves like this one right here you see how you can see the yellowing throughout the whole leaf and then you can also see the veins well this is sclerosis right here there are other conditions that are going to show the same symptoms but out of growing thousands of citrus over the years this is the main one i literally have not seen any other reasons why in my area at least now what that means is there is hardly any nitrogen in the container because over the year and a half i've been watering i've been flushing all the food away from the potting mix to the point where there's hardly any if any at all left in that container for the plant to actually eat so what's happening is my leaves are turning yellow that condition is called chlorosis now is that going to kill your plant no of course not it does that mean i'm over watering on my plant no it's not i still have to water this plant twice a day because if i though my plan will be dead in a single day here in arizona in full sun it's not over watering but i i have to water that often because i'm in the duster it's hot here and just like you would in full sun you will drink a lot more water in my area than you would any other state under the shade in lower temperatures now that's an easy fix right there now let's say you don't feed your plant and you let this go the next thing that's going to happen sometimes you may get some die back your smaller branches are going to start dying back for whatever reason that's another sign that you need to feed your plants too and then and you can see when you have a lot of plants and a lot of them are doing it you know it's it's you know something's up now if you have one or two plans you know it's hard to tell what the problem is but that's how i learn just by watching a bunch of plants all at once and when they all start acting the same then you know what's up now let's say i don't feed it they're just gonna start struggling they're gonna starve they're not gonna grow they're gonna take they're gonna sunburn a lot easier when the winter comes they're gonna take more frost damage when they go dry they're gonna die a lot faster it just makes the plant a lot weaker and eventually your plant will die for any other reason such as let's say you forgot the water and if it was a healthy plant you know it may wilt a little bit and you catch it in time it will come back no problem but a plant that's been starving will probably die a lot faster and that's how you will lose those plants if you don't feed them now that fix right there it's very easy all you gotta do is feed your plant in a few weeks this over here will go away because i just fertilized my plant and it will get some food it will grow and you'll be fine that's another way you can actually tell if you need to feed your plants or not it takes a little more experience so it's always best to ask somebody if you're not sure especially if you are new to container growing and citrus you can go on our social media facebook you can go on instagram post your picture and i will tell you exactly what is going on if you give me a brief description of your plant and a picture so remember i'm always here to help you out so join us on social media links below but anyways you can ask your friends or somebody else that has been growing citrus longer than you have but those are the two ways you can actually follow in order to fertilize your citrus one is you can set them on schedule and feed them every year around the same time especially during the growing season you don't want to feed your plant when they're not growing so it's wasteful to feed your plant in the fall or in the winter time they're not growing it doesn't matter so usually for containers i like to feed them at the beginning of the season when they are literally starting to grow now another way is you can just look at your plant and look for the signs that you plant needs food and if you stick to a slow release fertilizer then you will be good to go i like this because it's so easy to do and fast and it's just it's just the way to go when you have a lot of plans if you have a few plans you can go fancier if you want but this has been working for me for many many years now the reason i say do not emphasize on the mpks the numbers is because in my opinion this numbers are a sales gimmick i do not believe that every single number here your plant is going to be eating it just like you when you eat food do you think you are able to absorb every better nutrients that label says in the package of the food you ate it from no most of that fertilizer actually gets flushed into the soil so what's left in that container who knows what it is maybe you have more nitrogen maybe you have more potassium maybe you have more phosphorus who knows you know we can't control that unless you're in a control environment and you know that gets complicated at that point do not emphasize on the numbers if you're going to stick to synthetic fertilizers find something that's slow release and you are good to go you can buy that brand right here you can buy another one i have not found any other ones so that's the only reason why i buy this one um but yeah the numbers are relevant do not worry about it i got another video coming out in the future where i explain this in more details and i can tell you this fertilizer here i use on every single plant that we have here at the nursery we're using mango trees mulberry trees all stone fruits apples flowers hibiscus silk floss rainbow eucalyptus longan lychee star fruits what else jelly pumps day pumps we use it on every single tropical plant that we have here at the nursery we use it on vegetables we use it on house plants succulents every 100 of the plants of the nursery we use this fertilizer and whether the plant flowers the plant fruits it doesn't matter they all grow they all flower they all fruit like they're supposed to and the numbers remain the same and if you go look online you know there's always a specific fertilizer for every single plant but anyways as a summary one way you can actually fertilize your plant this put it on a schedule and fertilize every single year if you miss it like i did just go ahead and do it better late than never right um and second way is by looking at your plan and if you're not sure ask people around you don't always follow what you know some people tell you though like the yelling on the list always means overwatering if that's that water and that citrus you saw earlier it will die in one single day here in full sun but if you post that picture online a lot of people are going gonna tell you that's an overwatering issue watering was partly the reason why but it's because i have to water that often because my plants are drying out so quickly so it's always flushing the nutrients away from the potting mix now what type of fertilizer to use that's up to you you can go with a slow release of fertilizer you can go with an instant release fertilizer or you can go the organic way which i have another video coming out in the future where i show you how you can fertilize your plant organically but anyways hopefully that helps you out it answers some of the questions you have about growing your citrus how to fertilize it when to fertilize so how do you know when you even need to fertilize it so if you have any further questions don't forget to join us on social media subscribe click the bell like the video and any other questions comment below

Channel: QCTropicals

Views: 42,807

Keywords: citrus, orange, lemon, lime, grapefruit, kumquat, tangerine, madarine, fertilize, plant food, how to

Id: d2IPsy1odzk

Length: 19min 31sec (1171 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 27 2022