Any other Citrus fanatics here?

can’t wait to see it! Our finger lime lost its leaves last winter(outdoors and unsheltered), and just now leafing out, so worried it might be a bit delayed in overall photosynthesis for this growing season.

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That’s weird. None of my citrus drop any leaves in the winter. They are evergreen.

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we get several hours of sub-freezing temps here almost every winter, or at least at this side of las vegas.

our meyer lemons do the same as well, while oranges and tangerines die-bac quite severely, often getting smaller than its overall size when first obtained(shipped from california).

kumquats, trifoliates, and calamondins are the only ‘evergreen’ and non-shrinking citrus may grow unsheltered here.

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I’m surprised Vegas got that cold. I’m also in 9B and assumed the climates were similar.

How cold did the finger lime take? (I just carried mine in and out for days because it was threatening frost.

As promised.

The pot is 18 inches tall. Just standing the plant is taller than me 5’6"

The stem is just over an inch thick

Scott

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that is so impressive @Chills. Quite incredible, considering your zone. Am sure your neighbors would pay to take selfies with it!

btw, our finger lime endured several hrs of 27F, or probably a little colder.
will do get 15F’s here every now and then, so i guess it hasn’t seen the worst…

btw, @Calron, there are some tree-sized citrus(meyer lemons) i see here in vegas, but quite few and far in between. Am sure those were protected by their owners the first several years. I have also seen some of them(big ones) succumb to a severe arctic spell, my neighbor’s being one of them, so being tree-sized does not exactly insure any citrus from vegas’ hard freezes.

below is the little docu of our little finger lime

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I purchased an Owari Satsuma last year and then was given a Meyer Lemon, Persian Lime and Washington Navel by a person who was tired of growing them (since they bothered his stomach when he ate them) and left them out in sub freezing weather (so I guess they are ‘rescues’, LOL). They were large and I struggled to get them in the house as more cold weather was coming and I had no clue how to prune them with fruit on them. They dropped leaves, but now they are all coming back great. Just today I was ‘summer pruning’ them to get them down to ‘door size’.

I also have Poncirus in ground from which rooted cuttings quite easily. I wanted to try grafting the other varieties onto it to give as gifts. Is poncirus a suitable rootstock for these other varieties?
Whoops. I also wanted to ask if anyone here has successfully grafted citrus and when and by what method?

yes, and may just be the only option if you’re out of zone and worried about cold feet. That you have an in-ground and established poncirus is awesome news! since all you need worry about is insulating or keeping the above-ground grafts from freezing

Thanks Raf, but if I graft a Meyer Lemon to a poncirus rootstock, I’d still need to bring it inside, right? We got down to 9 deg F this last winter and single digits is not uncommon for us.

you could use smaller poncirus suckers, plant them in-ground(since you’ve proven your poncirus hardy to your area for several winters already), and then graft them over with meyer lemon.

you could then adorn your meyer lemon grafts with incandescent xmas lights during winter.

if you’re ok to spend a bit on plastic domes/mini-greenhouses from big lots or harborfreight, you could keep them relatively warm during winter with far less power consumption. Bringing plants in and out your house is still the safest way, but there might be a time when you’d get tired having to do it. Also wouldn’t hurt to try fielding a few ‘sacrificial’ citrus with the least energy consumption, meanwhile.

you could also graft meyers onto your poncirus tree, but will be more difficult to put a dome over if you are trying to skimp on xmas lighting power consumption.

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almost certain single digits will kill meyers. Here, our meyers have survived15F’s unsheltered and unheated, but dieback is pretty much the norm. So the specimens only have static growth, if not actually shrinking in size, depending on severity of the arctic spells

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I guess this is the right thread for this, I just learned about a hybrid rootstock that is clay soil, wet soil and drought resistant, it’s a 2014 variety still in quarantine. It’s called ‘US-942’, it should be available from Riverside https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/accessiondetail.aspx?id=1917023

You can see information about it here http://www.crec.ifas.ufl.edu/extension/citrus_rootstock/Rootstock_Literature/rootstock-print-11x14-v3.pdf

We have about 80 citrus trees, with about 30 varieties. We have a large high tunnel for the more tender ones and also some avocados. We probably have 50 or so outside, including Meyer Lemon, Owari Satsuma, Eustis Limequat, Bloomsweet (pummelo), yuzu, Gold Nugget mandarin, Shasta Gold Mandarin, and Rangpur lime.

Our lowest temp. Outdoors for the last 5 years was 25 degrees. The high tunnel gives about 3 degrees above that at night and gets a lot warmer in the day, which is important in our foolish coastal climate.

JustAnne4,

Most certainly you’d have to bring in when it drops much below freezing. I lost several multi-year citrus this past winter because of unusually low temps and a prolonged freeze (over 2.5 months below freezing) which has never happened in over 40 years. In a heated greenhouse, they’d be fine, but when temps drop that low, lemons & limes freeze and die. My orange trees & calamondin did surprisingly well despite the cold. The satsumas, lemons & limes not so much.

Anthony

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So did a quick inventory of my Canadian citrus tree collection and I’m at 32 trees, approximately 17 or 18 varieties. They are:

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In my unfinished greenhouse, I planted in my 8’ x 3’ x 30" raised garden box a Meyer, Okitsu Wase satsuma, Owari satsuma, Kishu mandarin, Page mandarin, Ponderosa lemon, and a couple others that all died when winter temps hit -15C for over 2 days at least twice and stayed below freezing for almost 3 months. Most of these were my oldest, biggest, healthiest, most productive (i.e. favourite) citrus in my collection so losing them was a terrible blow. I’ve since added another 5 or so trees to my collection to bring it back up to 32 trees, but mainly going to let these grow out cause some are survivors that lost 80% of the plant during the winter and are just recovering now.

mksmith, based on my experience, I would add strings of old incandescent Christmas lights around each citrus tree in your hoop house and plug those in for added heat when temperatures drop in the winter.

Anthony

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CITRUS RULES ! :smiley:

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I’ve been messing around with citrus for about three years now. I’ve got about 15 trees, most of them in ground. I’m in kind of an edgy area for citrus. So I’ve been experimenting with passive (read: easy\free or cheap) heating systems to get them through the winter. I’ve been getting impressive results from large water tanks.

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Well I wouldn’t call myself a citrus fanatic (I could be) but I do love eating citrus so I do have a number of them in my suburban backyard.
The more interesting is my indigenous finger lime seedling that is about 4’ tall. It is about 3 years old and is yet to fruit. It is small leafed and very thorny.
My Washington navel is almost ready to harvest and is impatient to get ready for next season with a small number of fruit about 1" diameter.
The Navelina and the mandarins (Imperial and emperor) are finished while the Eureka and Myer lemons are still being harvested, have another crop about 1" diameter and flowering again. The Nagami kumquat had an accident and is in the recovery ward. Except for the Eureka and the Nagami all are in the ground. Accompanying these are a number seedlings in pots including 2 lemonade trees about 2 years old.

Eureka lemon Myer lemon Indigenous finger lime

Mick

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Gorgeous citrus trees my friend. Very well done. I wish I was in a more citrus-friendly climate and could do more in-ground citrus, but my last attempt resulted in losing most of my favourite, larger citrus to the nastiest winter in forever here.

Anthony

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