Repotting Citrus Trees  - Citrus Tree Soil

Hey everybody it's Rob the Backyard Gardener and it's time to get my citrus trees, mainly my orange trees today, repotted. Stick around, I'll talk about the type of soil that I'm using, the reason why I'm repotting them, and give you a look at the repotting process up close and personal. So today I'm going to go ahead and start repotting some of my citrus. These are the three orange seeds grown into these trees. We don't know if they're going to be grapefruit or tangerines or lemons or oranges or something else, but figured it's time to go ahead and get them repotted. You can see that the roots are starting to show through these pots. The soil settled a little bit and I know that the root balls are starting to get bigger in these. So I've got some bigger pots right here. You can tell by the size difference that it's going to be quite the upgrade. I don't have the exact dimensions on these I believe because I bought plants in these before. Yeah these are two gallon pots and I don't know for sure. This is probably a five gallon pot maybe. So we're going from two gallons to maybe five. It could be a little less, but it's definitely definitely about double the size. So it's got to be between three and a half and five gallons. I would say it's probably five. It's called a number five pot. I would imagine that means it's five gallons, but I don't have any details on it. The biggest key here is I want to get them upgraded because I want to give them room to grow. Plus we're just about ready to get into this Texas heat. The sun's blaring down on us today. Sorry about that. And so these pots are drying out a lot faster than I would like. And as you know with citrus, you do want the soil to be somewhat moist. Now my soil is somewhat moist, but it is requiring me to water it almost daily between the size of the pot with the size of the tree. And the heat that we're getting out here now is starting to get in the mid 80s and it'll be in the 100s here in the next two or three weeks. So don't really want to replant them or repot them when it's 100 degrees out. Figure since we have about an 80 to 85 degree temperature zone, if you will, over the next couple of weeks, good to get them repotted. The soil that I'm going to be using, because citrus does like a good draining soil, and you can use regular potting mix as long as it is good draining, but also has to be moisture retaining. The reason why it needs to be moisture retaining is citrus likes a little bit of wet soil. The reason why it needs to be good draining though is you don't want the soil to just be saturated and soggy and suffocate, drown, and get root rot on your roots. So I've chosen organic mix here and it's got quite the bit of goodies, if you will. It's got forest products like peat humus, compost, rice hulls, and cocoa coir, sphagnum peat moss, some poultry litter, alfalfa meal, and kelp meal. So it's got a lot of goodies in there to get it a good start once we repot these guys. I'm also going to be adding a little bit of phosphorus, just a little bit, only because, not that I assume these plants are going to do any flowering, but I do want to see if it can help promote them. This is a heavy nitrogen mix and I would like to get a little more phosphorus in there if I can. Now what I'm going to do is add about a third of this pot up, drop a little bit of the phosphate in there, then remove the plants from these, drop them in here, fill around, water it down to settle it, and then put some more potting mix in there, and then water it again and settle it. I will let them completely drain. Once that's done they'll be set up. For sake of time I won't record all of them, but I will get the tripod up and maybe we'll do the second or third one after I get them done. I'll be back with it set up. So we're just going to take some potting mix, put it on the bottom of this, just so we have a place where the roots can grow into. This potting mix is somewhat moist, but not moist enough that it's ready to receive plants. I didn't want to get it too wet right now because I will be watering through it, but I do want a pretty good base on the bottom of this just so that when it settles the plant doesn't sink too far in the pot and allows some growth, at least vertically, down into the soil. So that's probably about where I want it right there, and for a good measure I will take the plant, and I know it's in a pot, but I just want to get an idea. Yeah that'll probably sit pretty nicely. Now you want to be gentle here. I'm going to pour out any loose stuff on top and just break the sides a little bit, see how much root mass we have in here already after the few months it's been in. So as you can see we've got a pretty good root ball there. These roots are ready to go. Now I will slightly, not much, but slightly pinch the bottoms just to let the roots know they can spread out. Now that we've done that we'll center it in here. I'll break down the sides a little bit just like this, and then for sake of time I won't film me filling it up. You guys know that I'll be filling it up and then we'll do some watering next. So now that I've got the soil in there that's not pressed down, I didn't want to compact it, I'll let the water or the gravity of the water bring the soil to the level that it settles at. We're just going to give it a pretty good soaking and I'll just use my gloves to just feel around if there's any spots. I'm not really pressing hard, I'm just feeling if there's any pockets in here and it does feel good. I probably can add a little more soil because I have a little bit of the roots still showing right here, but it's not in bad shape overall. I'm going to water it down a little bit longer. What's going on Kai? And then we will go ahead and top it off and water it down again. For sake of time, like I said, I won't show you all three, but I will bring you back when all three are repotted. All right, we have all of them in their new pots. Pretty happy with the progress. I'll hose them down a little better. I don't like to keep any of the soil on the leaves, but I wanted to give you a quick look at all of them in their new pots. This should give me through the rest of the year or at least the next several months. I don't think I'll want to repot them right before the winter, but if they really put on some size or they're struggling with the heat, I'll either take them out of the direct sunlight for some times of the day or I will repot them into the next size pots that I have. Speaking of the leaves, this is a good time for me to go ahead and run through these and take off any of the diseased leaves. You can see we've got something going on with this one, so I'm really just going to pinch it off just like that. I don't want the plant focusing any energy on hospitalizing, if you will, any of these leaves that don't look good, so I'm just going to remove them to let the plant not worry about them. There's quite a few of them, you know, a handful or so between all the plants, and I don't really want these on the plant like I said. So I'll run through these and pull off all of the leaves that are definitely more of a hindrance than a help, and then we will wrap this video up and I will keep you guys updated on these three orange trees as well as my lemon trees in the next month or so. For those of you curious to how many leaves we actually removed, we removed a handful of them like I said. We've got about 10 or so leaves here that need to come off. Pretty happy now with the overall look. I will give you one more look at all the trees. They have put on a lot of size over the last couple of months, and then they slowed down the last couple of weeks, so I'm thinking that the pot, like we said because of the root binding, if you will, that they needed to spread out. I'm thinking that it will take another couple of weeks for them to get acclimated to the pot. I don't expect to see much action on them over the next couple weeks, but hopefully within three or four weeks we start seeing some new growth and some new girth, if you will. I didn't spend a lot of time on it, but these are definitely starting to get thick enough to support a fruiting system next year. Highly doubt, like I said, we're going to get any fruits this year. We're already getting close to the end of April, and there's no signs of any flowering buds, which is typical. These guys are not even in their fourth year yet, and technically it takes four to seven years for your citrus trees to put on some fruit, or at least to flower. Sometimes you get lucky and you can get them in two or three years, but typically grown from seed, especially with them just being store-bought seeds, we don't really have an idea of what they will be, what they will produce, if they will produce, or when they will produce. At the end of the day, I'm super excited about this series. I hope you guys are too. I know I've been delaying in getting it updated, but man, there's just not a lot to show in the juvenile stages. Once they get to this size, it's kind of just a waiting game to prevent any diseases and to see if they flower. Again, we're hoping that we can do everything possible this year and possibly get them to flower next year. So there you have it, everyone. That's the repotting process. Man, that sun is bright. That's the repotting process for my citrus trees. Mainly repotted them specifically because of the amount of heat we're going to get over the next 60 to 90 to 120 days, and I didn't want them to struggle. And now the clouds came. We like when the clouds come. Helps me see the camera. Anyway, just wanted to get you a quick update on these. I do plan on updating you on my pear trees, my kiwis, and all of the other trees I'm growing from seeds here over the next several weeks. Hope you're enjoying your spring, if it's spring where you're at. And as always, everyone, thanks for watching and happy gardening.