How to Grow CITRUS in Containers, Step by Step || Black Gumbo

hey there welcome to Black gumbo Southern gardening today I'm going to show you how to grow citrus trees in containers like this [Music] all right got a video for you about how to grow Citrus in containers I've got my notes Here on my phone normally I just kind of wing it but today I think it's important that I have everything in order so why do you grow Citrus in containers I live in zone 9B on the Texas coast and we could grow Citrus right in the ground and it usually does well but I want to grow them in containers for several reasons number one I can keep them small about this size maybe a little bigger small trees gives me the opportunity to have more trees more varieties you can control your tree better you have complete control over this tree it's health and it is totally dependent upon you the tree you've got to feed it you've got to water it but you have control so um they're easy also to save from the weather let me show you the problem I'm having with growing citrus in the ground this was my Meyer lemon tree Lucy the lemon and Lucy has been growing here for many years but in the past three years we've had two major freezes and well you can't take this you can't take this tree out of the ground and put it in the garage to protect it from the freeze so it's frozen back twice yeah we're gonna have to start working this tree down there's still good news though this is an established tree it's eaten out of the sewer actually and it's really healthy so it's growing back from above the graft Union down there we can take all this down and Lucy will come right back but it's so frustrating we lost all this fruit and uh yeah that's why we grow in containers in a container you can take your plant inside if there's going to be a freeze when up potting or transferring your your nursery tree into your pot what size do you get well typically you don't want to just go gigantic all out right at first you want to step up year after year or after a couple of years you want to step up to the next size that's just good culture practice when you're growing these trees my tree this is a key lime came in a pot that big that's about a three gallon pot I suppose well we're going to put it in a pot that's about twice that size I'm going to use this Barrel pot I'm I'm wanting something that's deep and wide and this is going to do so something like this this tree will live in for the next two years and then I'll pot up to something like one of these half wine barrels when this tree gets a little bit older we need to get it in here a pot that's about twice the size of the pot it came in that's usually what you want to go for make sure especially with Citrus make sure that your pot has lots and lots of drainage holes I've drilled holes all around the perimeter of this and these holes will ensure that our soil drains really well that brings us to the soil type citrus trees need a different kind of soil than your average potting soil now you can grow in regular potting soil at least two trees have been thriving in Kellogg's brand potting mix just potting mix and they're doing okay but I can do better than that Citrus needs a soil that drains really well doesn't hold on to a whole lot of moisture doesn't get compacted and that's why you need something with a lot of non-organic material in it like perlite vermiculite and maybe even some sand if you Google Citrus mixes Citrus soil you're going to find everyone's got an opinion and there are recipes out there you can make your own soil one popular recipe that's pretty simple is one third peat moss one-third perlite and one-third vermiculite so two-thirds of that mixture are not going to break down the perlite and the vermiculite will not break down what happens in a highly organic soil is that the Organics are going to over time break down and and that soil is going to Compact and that will damage the roots of your citrus plants so you want to you want to find something that's got a high volume of of coarse non-organic material like perlite or vermiculite some people use a little bit of sand in there too this will this will mean that the soil will drain well and won't break down so fast and as you up pot each year you can just add some more of the organic material as a top dressing or when you replant you can put some some fertilizer in there so or if you don't want to make your own you can get yourself a pre-mixed Citrus soil they come as Cactus and succulent and citrus soils and these are pre-made Kellogg's makes one and I like Kellogg's brand but I couldn't find any so I had to settle for Miracle Grow and the Miracle Grow brand is just just it's fine it does have the Miracle Grow fertilizer in there I don't really care for that but that stuff will work its way out in six months to a year and yeah it's not going to hurt so bought myself a bag of this Citrus and palm and Cactus soil from Miracle Grow and we're going to use that to up pot our tree okay so we have our pot a lot of people will put gravel down at the bottom to keep the plant to keep the soil able to drain and keep those holes down in there from plugging up I'm not going to do that I've never done that I've never found an issue if you have well-draining soil it's fine you can come back and you can take a drill and re-drill your holes if you have to if you discover they've plugged up a bit but you'll know if they get plugged up when you do a deep water nothing will come out it's just as easy to come in with a drill and poke those holes out so let's look at our root ball here and see what we're dealing with yeah look at that so what we'll want to do with a situation like this is kind of break up these roots down here at the bottom see how some of them are kind of circling around just Loosely kind of break up the bottom part new Nursery that I've never been to in my area that has tons of citrus trees and all kinds of varieties that you can you can buy it's called Joseph's Nursery it's in Pearland Texas and they've got Acres of trees well those aren't coming apart as well as I wanted what we want from our ultimate planting is for the original surface plane right here to be about an inch below our container so we're not going any deeper but these roots will have about this much more space to grow in for the next couple of years so plant it right there Orient it the way you want make sure it's not leaning it's a windy day and we're going to put our soil in this particular soil I don't know if you can tell but it's very light and it's got a lot of coarse material to it it's got some sand in it and it won't compact so we're just going to fill in around this tree well I'm just tearing everything up I'm just going to fill in around this tree and what I'm going to do when I get about halfway full is I'm going to add some fertilizer just a little bit of fertilizer because remember this is Miracle Grow there's already fertilizer in it let's say you're using your own mix you've made up your potting soil and you've used one of the recipes that doesn't include much organic material you want to amend your soil with a slow release fertilizer I recommend this this is IV Organics all-purpose and it is a very good slow release fertilizer if you want 10 off of your IV Organics order any IV Organics products go over their website fill up your shopping cart and when you check out use the code gumbo 10. gumbo tin you will be getting 10 off and you'll be supporting my channel so I like this stuff I don't like it just because they give me a little commission on sales no I like this stuff because it's really really good Charles over there Ivy Organics is a biologist and he's developed some excellent products and this is one of them it is 333 which means it's a low dose slow release fertilizer these are the main macronutrients nitrogen potassium nitrogen potassium nitrogen phosphorus and potassium but it also has the the other macronutrients that your plants need it has magnesium sulfur and calcium and those are also macronutrients and it's got a whole lot of other stuff in it as well really good stuff so what I'm going to do I'll show you how to do it at risk of maybe over fertilizing this tree because it's already got some fertilizing there but I'm just going to take a little handful and sprinkle it in that soil we just put in just a little bit because there's already some in there otherwise I would recommend that you read the instructions for potted plants that's a good stuff right there slow release now what we're also going to do the way a slow release fertilizer Works hey Phoebe can you move you're bumping my tripod good dog good dog the way slow release fertilizer works is this is not the stuff you put in there that the roots get in contact with and somehow there's an exchange going on what happens is bacteria and soil biology it eats that and releases the elements that your plant needs so what I'm going to do with the soil since it's fairly sterile is I'm going to inoculate the soil with Biology I'm going to come over here to my raised bed and just get a couple of handfuls of my native soil this is stuff that has good good life good biology in it I'm going to dig down and get some of the more moist stuff down beneath maybe an earthworm or two if we find one there's one right there got us an earthworm we're set let's go put this in our pot here we go there are tons of bacteria in here that is not present in this sterile soil so we'll put that in there too that bacteria will colonize this soil spread like wildfire and make that fertilizer available to the plant and get this pot off to a good start I would prefer a little more perlite in here but I don't have any on hand and I didn't buy any perlite is that Little White Rock you see in here these little white bits it's in most potting soils perlite is an expanded volcanic rock it's almost like volcanic rock popcorn and it's very good stuff for helping keep the soil from compaction it aerates the soil good stuff I'm going to just kind of pack that down and continue to top it off the soil is the critical part of starting a tree off right because that's where the tree gets its its fertility from so what's what's going to happen next is this tree depends on you feed this soil you're not so much feeding the tree as you're feeding the soil and the life in the soil because like I said it's that it's that biology in the soil that makes the nutrients available to your plants you're coming to inspect the work Phoebe all right that's enough soil it's mulch all right let's water this in I want to water the entire soil area you want it to soak all the way in all the way down to the bottom we'll want to do this now and give it a good soak come back later give it a second good watering and we want to water here until hopefully we see it coming out the bottom there this initial watering will help settle our soil around those roots rehydrate some of those dry roots that were along the outside of the root ball up against the plastic of that Nursery pot so we'll just keep watering and keep watering I'm going to put this whole two and a half gallon can on here and we'll come back and do it again later now watering this plant is key generally citrus likes to get watered really well just like I'm doing here give it a good solid soaking and then pay attention to your soil don't water it again until the soil feels almost bone dry but not quite almost bone dry so stick your finger down in there and see what the soil feels like and when it's almost bone dry then give it another another watering of course if you're outside you get a lot of rain then you don't have to worry about it all right we've got water coming out the bottom and that was the entire two and a half gallons so we're watered in a round one at least but now we know that our soil is draining well and our holes aren't plugged up all right that's good we have another a step to do an optional step but I think it's a wise step these plants when they were grown at the nursery were amongst hundreds Maybe not maybe thousands of little saplings together growing up and their leaves and canopy covered their delicate bark and shaded them kept them from getting sunburned I'm growing this well close to other trees but there's going to be a lot of direct sunlight on this uh this bark here that is not used to it so you'll see that a lot of folks will paint the fruit trees with a latex paint or they'll wrap them with tree wrap to keep from sunburning we're going to do that but I'm not using paint I'm going to plug IV Organics again IV Organics makes this three in one plant guard that I absolutely love I love it because it's organic it's based on diatomaceous earth and essential oils it's not like latex paint where you put a layer of plastic on your tree and that plastic degrades and flakes off over time this is air permeable it's not uh gonna you know suffocate your tree it has the essential oils that repel insects that might bore into the bark smells good goes on easy and like I said it's totally organic so what we're going to do is use this and this is the brown color they come in Many Colors I've used the white for about three years and I used this brown on my apricot tree there's a video about that how to plant an apricot tree and we used this stuff and it was really went on really nice it smells good and it will protect this little tree because this tree I want this tree to live this is a key lime tree and I need those key limes so we're going to cut these straps off and take the support down and paint the tree then we're going to put that support back on until this tree gets a little more established it's kind of top heavy it catches the wind I don't want it to snap see how these are real tight on that tree we don't want that we want it we want it to be attached with a rather loose attachment so it can grow all right we got that right out of there come on you there we go lay that aside let's get this trunk covered once you mix this up you want to try to use it within a well a short amount of time it'll separate out the oils and all I've actually used this stuff when it was years old still seemed to work but it's recommended that you try to use it up pretty quick I've got a lot of trees I can make this disappear real fast IV Organics they make some good stuff in Charles over there at the ivy Organics YouTube channel has tons of great videos he grows a lot of citrus in containers in fact he grows a lot of lemons and I like I like his approach to things hello Phoebe you're coming to check out the Ivy organic stuff huh I love the way it smells all right you just paint it on and it will dry and leave a a protective coating on here a coating that is not plastic is not you know latex you can get some of these tender branches too but mainly interested in the exposed part here the leaves will cover up the rest of it way up high real simple process you can mix this stuff up thin to paint on you can mix it up a little thicker if you want this stuff's pretty thin right now but it's going to do the job there we go that'll work this product also makes an excellent wound covering if you get get a wounded tree Nick the bark or something you can use this stuff to just kind of paint over that okay you've got your tree planted and you're looking forward to something like this how do we care for it over time what's a good fertilization schedule I prefer to fertilize once a month during the growing season at a minimum with during the winter months not fertilizing at all the trees of metabolism is not working the soil during the winter as much as it is at Peak growing season which is in the middle of the summer and I like to begin fertilizing with maybe a half dose when the when the first signs of of spring are coming on and your plant may be putting on some new leaves and new shoots and then start your your monthly fertilization I prefer a liquid fertilizer an organic liquid fertilizer but you don't have to do that you can continue to use an all-purpose fertilizer that's a slow release again I would apply a top dressing monthly and let that slowly work you know over the course of the month you can also take the approach of fertilizing once every two weeks with a liquid fertilizer that's a low dose fertilizer maybe a half a half of what the instructions tell you again back off in the fall and give maybe half a dose through the fall and then in the winter you don't have to fertilize at all the trees are in low production mode so that's uh that's how you care for these things it's really nice to have citrus in your own backyard and with keeping your trees small by pruning them every now and then well you can you can have all kinds of citrus let's talk about that too pruning citrus trees don't really need to be pruned but you do want to thin out any branches that are kind of crossing over and growing into the middle you just want to make sure that all the foliage gets light you can prune for size at any time I like summer pruning summer pruning tends to stunt the tree and you don't have to have a dwarfing rootstock to keep a tree small in her book grow a small fruit tree by Anne Ralph she talks about that you don't have to have a dwarfing root stock you just have to keep on top of pruning this tree is you know it's a living thing and it will it will grow but you want to keep the tree about the the same size with citrus trees you can go a little bigger you can keep you can keep the tree about twice the size the the overall kind of volume of your canopy twice the size of your container and you can keep that fruit tree alive if you fertilize it well not just alive but it will thrive well the whole point of growing citrus is to enjoy Citrus let me show you how to harvest from citrus trees you never want to just grab the fruit and pull somebody did that on the fruit that was here and it wasn't me you can see it left behind that little stub but you're uh the proper way is to clip it is to clip the stem that avoids damage to your fruit and this will keep longer on your on your shelf with that little stem there we go let's see what's inside this is a sanguinely blood orange I'm going to get the other one this is the last the last two on my tree for this year there we go all right let's see what's inside oh nice look at that that's what we're after nice red blood orange you can't buy this at the store and that's what the inside of a blood orange looks like that's why we grow citrus well there you go that's how you grow Citrus in a pot we've got our trees blossoming we've got buds coming out on the Mandarin this is uh the blood orange it had fruit on it until we just took it off but it's already blossoming if you've never smelled a citrus Blossom there's nothing like it in the world it's such a good fragrance oh I love it my wife will cut blossoms off of our lemon tree and take them in just to fill the house with that scent well hey if you like to uh support this channel if you like what we do head over to ivorganics and buy some stuff use the code gumbo 10 and you'll get 10 off your order and I'll get a little bit of a commission and that's that's a way you can help support us and Charles over there I view Organics because they're doing great work great products absolute uh delightful man so uh subscribe hit the Bell notification so you won't miss anything and we'll talk to you next time happy gardening to you bye-bye thank you

Channel: Scott Head

Views: 257,808

Keywords: Gardening, Vegetables, Texas Gardening, Zone 9a, Black Gumbo, IV Organics, How to Grow Citrus in Containers, How to Grow Citrus, Growing citrus trees, Home grown citrus, how to grow a lime tree

Id: JsKV_QONggA

Length: 23min 20sec (1400 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 26 2023