- Citrus is by far one of
my favorite fruits to grow. As you can see, this grapefruit
is absolutely popping off. It's one of the first things
I saw when I moved in here at the epic homestead. In today's video, we're
gonna talk about mistakes that you might be making with citrus. Let's get a better understanding
of our citrus trees so we can grow them and get
huge epic harvests like this and not something barren and sad. Before we get into mistake number one, let's just take a quick
look at the cross-section of this grapefruit, which typically isn't ripe until February. I mean, that's pretty
dang good right there. Where I am in my citrus hedgerow, 10 or 11 citrus coming down
here, we put in last February. So, almost a year ago now. What I wanna show you is a pruning mistake that you might be making on citrus that you actually would
wanna do on other trees. So out here in the back on
this royal apricot tree, it's a good time to look at
the structure of this tree because it's winter. So, it's dropping its leaves or it's beginning to drop its leaves. And you can see the canopy
is nice and spread out. I pruned this awhile back
to open up the middle to allow more air flow, which is what you really
don't wanna do with citrus. What I have here is my Moro blood orange out in the front yard. And you can see it's
got a nice dense canopy, which is what citrus wants. It actually wants a tight dense canopy where the interior of the
plant, the trunk, et cetera, it's actually not exposed. So unlike other fruit,
you don't wanna come in with your pruning shears, and just start snipping
away to increase airflow. It's not going to prefer that. And so, just let it be. It's gonna have a lot of fruit on the lower one-third of the plant. It needs all of those
leaves and that protection from the sun to generate the
energy to produce those fruit. As a follow-up on that pruning mistake, you can actually prune at a time where you're removing any
chance for the plant to fruit. So, take a look. We have some "Nagami" kumquat here. They tend to fruit from
November through January or so. And if I was to prune right
before November like October, and like I came in and I
did some shaping cuts here, then I've probably removed
a lot of the growing tips that are gonna produce all the kumquat that are sitting right here, so make sure that both on a species level and a variety level, that you look up when it's going to fruit, and do not prune before
that, prune after that. So here's an example of a Valencia orange that has gone a little haywire. It's thrown up some
really aggressive shoots that I can prune for shape if I want. Now, my situation is kind of interesting because I've planted my
citrus so close together. My goal is to create what I'm
calling the citrus hedgerow. Eventually, these will all blend together, and they'll ripe and successively, you'll sort of have this
wall of citrus fruit. That being said, I have
to prune for that purpose. So I'm gonna come through
and actually top down a little bit of growth here. I don't need to worry so much about potential fruit
sacrifice in this case because I'm past my window, but also because in the
first couple of years and in the upcoming mistake, I'll show you why you actually may want to remove some fruit. We're back here at the Moro blood orange, the single orange on the tree. Why just one? Well actually, there were more than one before I did the unthinkable
and actually cut them off. And the reason why is if
you have young citrus, you can actually hamper their growth vegetatively quite a bit by trying to get three or four citrus in your first year of growth. It's better to set your
plan up for success and sacrifice the fruit
early on in the tree's life so it can put out all this vegetation so that in the following years, the structure of the tree is better as well as the production
of the tree is better. So what I did and it
hurt a lot I have to say, is I plucked off all but one
or two on most of the trees down this row. It's very difficult to do but you can still do
stuff with unripe citrus. You can make oils and cleaning products. There's all sorts of
different things you can do. Check out Epic Homesteading,
our secondary YouTube channel for some ideas over there, but really it hurts, but you gotta do it. Take off early fruit
on young citrus trees. The next mistake you can
make is one that I've made, and it is not cleaning up the under canopy of your citrus area before it's too late. Pretty straightforward, guys. You just wanna make sure
that you're removing weeds, especially from the base
here 'cause, you know, a lot of people think
that a tree has roots that go way down deep. But in fact, a lot of the
times trees have feeder roots that are coming out this way. And so, weeds on the surface right next to the base of the plant are actually taking
nutrients from your tree which you don't want. So take these bad boys out. Look at this guy, he was
trying to mine for nutrients, not on my watch. This citrus is getting it all. Now I get it, if you're
watching this video in a colder climate, you're thinking, "Wow Kevin, it must be nice. "You can sit here in early January. "It's so hot, you had
to take the jacket off "that you started this video with, "what do I do in a colder
climate with citrus?" There's a few mistakes
that you might make. It's still possible, and
there's a couple of tips I have for you. But first of all, it starts out with proper fall prep and winter care. So, fertilize for the
very last time in fall. Then, don't do any winter pruning if you're in a colder climate because you want as much plant matter on the citrus as possible
to help insulate it. It doesn't wanna be in a cold climate, but with proper growing
conditions, you can make it work. So first, if you're a
container citrus grower, which is probably your best option, if you're in an area that
freezes in the winter, you're going to want to move it indoors. The way to do that though is to prep it. So take the container about three weeks before you're going to
fully move it indoors, bring it into a semi-shaded area so it gets used to a
lesser amount of light a little bit sooner, then bring it indoors south-facing window, ideally, a grow light
if you can afford one. It's going to be the best
because remember citrus doesn't really wanna
be in that environment, but you can support it
being in that environment by giving it a grow light. If you are an adventurous
citrus grower in a cold climate, a mistake that you might be making is not protecting the
plant during the winter. So, it's in the ground,
I'm not going to say, "Hey, dig your citrus up." No, what I'll say is threefold. Number one, if you know it's
gonna be a really cold night, water beforehand because it's less likely that the soil will freeze when it's damp than when it's not that damp. So that's one tip. Another thing is to
take floating row covers or frost blankets, and you can actually wrap the tree canopy in it, if you know it's gonna be windy, blustery, maybe sleeting, hail, whatever, you can make sure that you
protect the tree from that. Then I would say the most
important thing really is taking trunk down here and wrapping that trunk and protecting it. So you can take like a cardboard sleeve, take cardboard kind of
mess with the corrugation a little bit so it's
a little more pliable, and then you can wrap it
around the trunk of the tree. You can also put frost
blankets around that. And finally, a weird tip
that I've seen recommended certainly festive during the winter is to take a pack of Christmas lights and weave them throughout
all of your trees. A little bit of extra warmth
coming out of those lights, sometimes seems to maybe make
a little bit of a difference. I don't know, it looks cool. It might work for you, I've seen it recommended here and there. I've got a long way to go
on my budding citrus orchard but at least for now I can enjoy one of these beautiful grapefruits. These tips should help you have
quite a good citrus season, really with plant growing, it's more about avoiding mistakes than it is about doing the right things. So hopefully this video helped. I'm gonna take a bite of
this grapefruit right now. I'll see you in the next one. Good luck in the garden
and keep on growing. (slow jazz instrumental music) It's actually pretty
good, it might be ripe.
