Top tips for growing a healthy and productive citrus tree | Gardening 101 | Gardening Australia

[Music] just down the road from me at his wholesale nursery brunswick heads expert grower john mills has grown millions of citrus trees and today john is sharing his tips for citrus success how long have you been growing citrus i started about 45 years ago and it was just one of those things that i really enjoyed and how many varieties have you got now i've got about 40 in here wow so john these rootstock seedlings are quite packed in together yeah the most important part of the tree is the rootstock that you start with and the reason why we grow them in the ground like this is to get that perfect root formation can you tell me about that over there which what which one is this it's trifoliata it's a very good variety for home gardens uh it's a semi-dwarf root stock a good average height it'll get to is about four meters you can put all varieties of citrus foliage if the ground is a bit wet or the ground's a bit dry it's got a better chance of surviving than some of the other root stocks why is that it's just harder it's more it's just hardier so tell me about the flying dragon the flying dragon it's a dwarf rootstock see how the trifoliato the thorns are pointing upwards with the flying dragon they go out with the smaller backyard there's a bigger and bigger demand for a flying dragon rootstock can you plant them quite close together you can yeah you can probably plant a dwarf a meter and a half apart uh big trend is growing the citrus trees in pots now but they'll always do better in the ground yeah so this is where the magic happens john what have we got here now we've got a rootstock here ready to graft so we've selected a tahitian lime twig we call it a bud stick so what we do we trim off the thorns and the leaves so we trim them off neatly and on that bud stick there might be 15 butts is there a way in particular to select the bud stick yeah you've got to make sure it's nice and firm and it should match the tree you're going to put it on so we're relatively new growth but established yeah okay we're going to trim the thorns and the leaves off the rootstock okay we're now going to make an incision to put the butt in we'll come down about 30 millimeters then we go across and we and that makes an upside down tee yeah we prize the bark opened but just very slightly very slightly yeah and then we cut a bud okay like that it's important that they have a nice flat surface try not to put your fingers on the face of the bud thank you so then you just fit it in like that lift that in becomes part of the the tree a little bit of tape start off with that it's easy to start off the bottom of your just below the tee uh-huh and then you start the spiral up ah so you ah okay so you're going over the wood as well you're going over the budwood and over the tape you're taping over yourself all the time so no water can get in right in three to four weeks time when we cut this off we unravel the tape and you'll see a nice live boat sitting in there and is there a reason why you leave the leaves here photosynthesis okay to encourage the growth chewing tourists to grow yeah [Music] how good is citrus awesome it's really good [Music] is there an optimum or an ideal time to be planting your trees spring summer okay in a waterman's optimum in north queensland you'll be able to plant all year round but maybe not in tasmania not in tasmania that's right so john all that hard work of what we've just seen the processes of what you've been doing is this your that's it the reward yeah it's a tahitian lime on flying dragon rootstock that we've nurtured for two plus years wow and now we've ended up with this shall we try planting it let's do it tell me about your hole okay we have a nice square hole so when the roots start to spread out instead of going around in a circle they'll find a corner and go into the corner and penetrate the corner so we'll place the tree neatly in the hole we'll then put a little bit of dirt like this yeah and then we'll put about 50 grams of slow release fertilizer around there and then we'll proceed to fill it up it's important to only plant it to the height that it's already in the container because if you cover the bud union it wouldn't be good it could kill the tree we always put falmonus around it before we start it's composted foul manure and then we'll put t3 mulch around it and though even though we've put a fair bit of bowel manure around a fair bit of mulch around it our bud union is still well above the globe right right it's time to water it in time to water it in all around the small drip line of the tree give it a nice soaking probably water it every three or four days for the first two or three weeks and then ease back to once a week right and then after that just monitor it that's a good soak isn't it it is yeah okay so in the first year when you see the flowers what should we do i would pull them off but some people can't bear to pull the flowers off because they've been waiting they want to get some food yeah even if it's one or two that's right even if it's only one or two but what what is the reason why you foot pull off well if you pull off the flowers then you don't get the fruit and then the growth will go into the tree rather than two or three pieces of fruit to establish the root system to establish the root system and the tree it's got enough fertilizer in the ground to sustain it for a few months the best time to fertilize citrus trees is july august and then you give it another application the end of the summer and keep your mulch up yeah because that really holds down the moisture and the nutrients yeah yeah yeah do you feel all the same about all your trees or do you have favorites so you i probably do have favorites but i like them all because they're all got their different values and they'll get they're different looks so i like them all i just love ground trees yeah especially citrus that's it yeah [Music] you

Channel: Gardening Australia

Views: 147,090

Keywords: Gardening, Gardening Australia, garden, gardening tips, gardening advice, plants, how to, ABC, ABC TV, citrus, lemon, lime, citrus tree, citrus plant, citrus growing, how to grow a citrus, how to grow lemon, how to grow lime, rootstock, trifoliata, TRIFOLIATE ORANGE ROOTSTOCK, orange, orange tree, Citrus trifoliata cv, TRIFOLIATE ORANGE ‘FLYING DRAGON’ ROOTSTOCK, Citrus cv, LIME ‘TAHITIAN’, John Mills, flying dragon, dwarf rootstock, propagating citrus, bud union, citrus tips, graft

Id: I4HdpWC663k

Length: 7min 13sec (433 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 19 2021