Complete Guide To FERTILIZING CITRUS TREES In Containers

good afternoon gardeners it's saturday april 17th it's a gorgeous spring day here on the southeastern coast of north carolina and today i want to show you all how to fertilize citrus trees when growing them in containers over the recent years i've really gotten into growing citrus and i have a number of different citrus trees that you see in front of you all the way over here i have a key lime tree which is a very non-cold tolerant tropical here i have a variegated pink lemon here i have an excalibur red lime which is very cold hardy here i have a moro blood orange then over here i have a maewa kumquat i have a brown select satsuma and a little seedling down here which is a seed grown ikang lemon all three of these are very cold hardy and i intend to plant them in ground here in zone 8a north carolina then over here i have a karakara red navel orange which is going to be an interesting experiment for me to see if i can grow it here if you've been following this channel for a while you know that i have numerous videos out there on how to fertilize various fruits and vegetables and in all of those tutorials i've provided to you a very similar method of fertilizing your trees and your vegetables because at the end of the day most of them are overwhelmingly similar this right here is an example bag of fertilizer and on every single bag of fertilizer that you buy you will notice that there will be three numbers separated by two dashes and each of those three numbers represent three different elements from the periodic table and they are nitrogen or n phosphorus or p and potassium or k and what we call this is the npk ratio here the npk ratio is three five six which means that the concentrations of each of those elements in this bag are approximately three percent nitrogen five percent phosphorus and six percent potassium and those three elements are the three macronutrients of every plant now we know as humans our three macronutrients are fats carbohydrates and proteins but for a plant their three macronutrients are nitrogen phosphorus and potassium so it's very important that when we pick our fertilizer we select ones with appropriate macronutrient balances that benefit our plants just like fats carbohydrates and proteins serve different functions in the human body np and k all serve different unique functions in the bodies of plants nitrogen is predominantly responsible for new green growth so things like leaves and new branches on your trees come out of the nitrogen addition to the fertilizer phosphorus contributes generally to root growth and the development of new flowers whereas potassium is responsible for cellular division and the overall health of the plant and the metabolic rate of that plant and when you add npk together in certain ratios you can kind of be a conductor of the orchestra and and you can almost take control of your plant and dictate how you want things to grow so as i mentioned in my previous fertilizing videos most of what i grow are fruit trees and fruiting vegetables and because of that i like to feed my plants generally a balanced npk ratio for the beginning portion of the season and then when they begin to flower i like to switch my fertilizer regimen to promote more phosphorus i like adding things like bone meal which is a rich source of phosphorus into my garden because i want the plants to flower more heavily and i also like to restrict nitrogen when fruit formation happens because nitrogen makes more leafy green growth so if you tend to give your plants higher nitrogen you often get more leafy green growth and less fruiting for the most part however citrus trees especially when grown in containers are different and they break all of the rules citrus plants actually prefer when grown in containers to receive a higher nitrogen feed all year round which makes them pretty unique and i think i can explain to you why they're different than most other fruits it's the goal of all fruiting trees and vegetables to produce their fruits because that is how they produce seed in order to reproduce and spread the species throughout the planet however just because it's in their best interest to fruit doesn't mean that every single species wants to put all of their energy into fruiting things like figs tomatoes peppers and a lot of the things that we commonly eat that we consider fruits and vegetables they really only produce what they need to so manipulating the fertilizing ratios can help put more of their energy into fruiting instead of directing all of their energy into green growth so you can get a better harvest in a very brief time frame citrus trees on the other hand are very different whatever the genetic component of citrus is it causes them to flower and over produce fruits like crazy citrus put on incredible numbers of blooms and because most citrus varieties are completely self-fertile every single one of the flowers will form a fruit zooming in on this tree you can see just on this flower cluster alone how many little tiny individual fruits there are and when you zoom out the ground here is absolutely littered in citrus blossoms if you think there's a lot of blooms on this tree right now you should have saw it two weeks ago it was absolutely covered you could hardly see the leaves and there must be well over a hundred blood oranges on this tree right now this tree is barely three feet tall there is no way it can hold more than a dozen or so fruits i only got four off of it this year but it's it's producing hundreds of fruits and citrus has a habit of self-thinning so it will only hold on to the fruits that the tree is mature enough to hold so you don't have to worry about picking them off however with citrus there is no need to give them incredible amounts of phosphorus because they already fruit like crazy what they actually have trouble doing is producing leaves because they put so much energy into the the blooming and the fruiting and the ripening they sometimes forget that hey i need to i need to make more branches and more leaves so i can support all of these fruits so when you grow citrus you actually want to prefer nitrogen in most cases to remind the tree they have to get bigger every single year and not just focus on fruiting all of the time so i prefer npk ratios that have higher nitrogen for citrus in containers all year round and in my opinion the ideal ratio is about six three three or two parts nitrogen for every part phosphorus and potassium if you can find a 633 fertilizer that's pretty perfect for citrus trees however if you can't find that exactly that's no problem i'll show you how you can make your own fertilizer that is ideal for citrus in containers by blending a few different things together now it can be pretty challenging to find fertilizers that have a ratio of about 633 npk but we can easily correct existing fertilizers to make them what we want them to be so right here i'm able to find this 356 uh tomato organic fertilizer for a very cheap price at walmart and it's really good stuff so i'm going to simply fortify this with additional nitrogen in order to make up the gap so if i take a one cup measuring spoon right here and i put in one cup of this 356 fertilizer this fertilizer in here now has a ratio of npk of three five six so i need to add some nitrogen to it and what i'm going to do is i'm going to use this organic blood meal which is 12 nitrogen so it has an npk of 12 0 0 so if i were to simply add one cup of this to the fertilizer that would give me an npk of fifteen five six so i want to get to twelve five six and three quarters of 12 is nine so if i add three quarters of a cup of this blood meal to my fertilizer right here that will give me a twelve five six percentage which is almost exactly that six three three so i'm simply going to mix some blood meal into that and that is going to give me the perfect npk ratio for potted citrus that we already discussed now if you don't want to go through this extra work you don't have to we're just trying to do what's ideal right here if you just go out and you buy an organic five five five or a four four four and you make sure that all npk is well represented your potted citrus will do fine you don't have to go through this extra work however for me it's very simple to just add a blood meal supplement and get that perfect ratio so if you're not opposed to doing a little bit of extra work it will help however if you just use a 555 you will surely do just fine and now all we're going to do is we're going to take two tablespoons of the fertilizer and we're going to sprinkle it in the bottom of the plant and then we're just going to lightly rub it into the top inch or two centimeters of the soil to incorporate it and we're going to go ahead and we're going to do that for every single one of these potted citrus plants now the last thing we're going to do is we're going to wet down all of the organic fertilizer that we just placed you have to water it in because it's the water that will start the decomposition process organic fertilizers are not immediately bioavailable they have to be consumed by the natural soil biology like the bacteria and the fungi in there in order to break down be usable by the plants and when we water them in we're going to supplement them with soluble fertilizers soluble fertilizers have already been broken down so they will be immediately bioavailable to the plants whereas the organic fertilizers feed slowly over a long period of time these feed quickly and what i'm going to use is i'm going to use my secret weapon in my garden which is alaska fish fertilizer it's made out of ground fish that has been fermented and it is just an incredible source of micronutrients it also has a fertilizer strength of 511npk then i'm going to supplement it with this expert gardener soluble fertilizer it's an exact knock off of miracle grow all purpose with an npk of 24 816. so this is a little bit high in nitrogen but i find it's very good for the container citrus when you mix the two together they perform very well so i'm going to follow the package instructions on the soluble fertilizer and i'm going to give them a concentration of one tablespoon per gallon of soluble fertilizer and then to that i'm going to shake up this fish fertilizer and i'm going to add a little glug of fish fertilizer in there which will probably be about maybe an eighth to a quarter of a cup just about a two second pour and what you can also do is once or twice a year you can add a tablespoon of epsom salts to your soluble fertilizer and that will provide magnesium and sulfur in trace amounts to your plants you don't need to do that often you should not be doing that every time it's just something that's smart to do maybe one or two times a year so now we're just going to fill up each watering can and mix the fertilizer very well now that the fertilizer has been mixed it's time to water our plants and how you water them is going to depend on the type of container that your citrus trees are in if you're using just standard nursery pots you're simply going to water them with about 1 6 of the watering can per tree however by far my favorite containers to grow citrus in are these self-watering pots they're only about ten dollars from walmart and they have a little reservoir for water on the bottom and the reason why they're so great to grow citrus in is because citrus hate wet feet they hate it when water collapse in the bottom of the soil they're very prone to root rot so the way this works is you simply water the bottom right here there's a reservoir and the roots grow down into the reservoir and they slowly uptick water and nutrients from the reservoir here so the bottom doesn't really soak in water so what i like to do with these is i like to gently wet the top down after i place the organic fertilizer because you really want to wet down that organic fertilizer to begin the breakdown process and then i like to manually fill that reservoir in there with fertilizer and i'll do that for all of my trees in these self-watering pots and the last thing that we need to talk about is fertilizer scheduling how often should i be fertilizing my trees like this and that's going to come down to the climate and the age of your tree here on the southeastern coast of north carolina we tend to get deluge thunderstorms in june july august and september and the very heavy thunderstorms can wash out the containers so when we get the heavy rain it washes all the nutrients out of this little bit of soil in all of these containers and because of that i need to constantly re-feed my trees because of the rain so in situations like me where i get this washout effect from the heavy rains i fertilize every 14 days now if you live in a place like california or arizona or west texas or new mexico where you get very dry summers you can probably get away with fertilizing your container citrus every 30 days or so because you aren't having these storms come in or these rain events that are constantly washing the nutrients out of your pots the exception to that rule may be if you have very mature citrus trees if your citrus trees are very mature and they're in large pots and they're demanding a lot of fertilizer because they're so large you may want to bring that down to every 14 days or so so that's really for you to figure out every 14 to 30 days based on your own unique situation and that fertilizer schedule that i just gave you is what you want to follow during the growing season if you live in a place that is warm all year round where your citrus trees grow all year then you're going to want to follow that schedule all year if you live in a more northern climate like me where my citrus don't really do much after december they kind of just sit there you don't really need to fertilize them during that time period an exception may be if you're growing something like a key lime or a meyer lemon that fruit profusely all year round if you're growing them you're going to want to fertilize them all year long but if you're growing something like an orange tree that gives you fruit in december and then doesn't really do anything in march because you need to bring it inside and protect it you can skip fertilizing during that period i usually give my last fertilizing on my trees around thanksgiving because generally after christmas they more or less go to sleep and don't do a whole lot and then i give them their next fertilizing usually around march first or so because that is the beginning of meteorological spring and they're going to want to start flowering pretty soon so everyone i sure hope you found this video helpful if you did please hit that like button and if you haven't already subscribed to the channel please subscribe for future updates and more videos like these if you're curious about any of the products that i used in this video or in my garden in general they are all linked in my amazon storefront in the video description thank you all again so much for watching and i hope to see all of you again on the next video dale you found the one spot of sunshine you're sun puddling on your belly how are you feeling are you enjoying yourself would you like to say a few words you being a lazy bones nothing to say huh all right buddy you can have your lazy day

Channel: The Millennial Gardener

Views: 48,112

Rating: 4.9603176 out of 5

Keywords: fertilizing citrus, fertilizing citrus trees, fertilizing citrus trees in containers, fertilizing citrus trees in pots, how to fertilize citrus, how to fertilize citrus trees, how to fertilize citrus trees in pots, how to fertilize citrus trees in containers, how often to fertilize citrus trees, citrus, fertilizer, citrus tree care, growing citrus, container gardening, container grown citrus, fruit trees, how to grow citrus trees, organic gardening, The millennial gardener

Id: uhZ6gslBoVw

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021