7 Citrus Tree Mistakes to Avoid

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 going to 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. Well here 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 want to show you is a pruning mistake that you might be making on citrus that you actually would want to 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 a while back to open up the middle to allow more airflow, which is what you really don't want to 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 want to 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 going to have a lot of fruit on the lower one third of the plant. It needs all those leaves and that protection from the sun to generate the energy to produce those fruit. As a followup 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 I came in and I did some shaping cuts here, then I've probably removed a lot of the growing tips that are going to 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 ripen successively. You'll sort of have this wall of citrus fruit. That being said, I have to prune for that purpose. So I'm going to 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 all 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 plant 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 got to 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 want to 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. And 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 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 rep 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 want to 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 want to 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 going to 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 going to 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 the trunk down here and wrapping that trunk and protecting it. So you can take like a cardboard sleeve, take a 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 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 going to 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. It's actually pretty good. Might be right.