I have 6 trifoliate trees planted. They have been really slow growing for me. Three of them are planted in the shade, so I get the slow growth on those, but the other three are in full sun.
I have never given them very much fertilizer, just mulched them with composted sheep manure once and I try to mulch them with wood chips (2 year old) once a year.
I have also never watered them. Or pruned them.
Anyone have any tips to get them to take off?
Yes, water and fertilize them if you want them to grow faster. They are pretty durable, but you gotta treat them to some comforts if you want them to grow with less caution.
Yes, of course that makes sense, but when should I start fertilizing and when should I stop? What type of fertilizer do people typically use?
I would feel comfortable fertilizing as soon as there is visibly active growth beginning for the season, but stop adding any fertilizer by early to mid-summer so the new shoots will slow down and harden off before winter. I couldn’t say what N-P-K ratios are appropriate for you soil, but where I am I don’t worry about having much of the P & K portion and just focus on adding the N for pushing growth.
@JohannsGarden do you fertilize citrus even if there are fruit on the tree? I am guessing yes but wanted to confirm. Sorry for a noob Q.
My Citrus trees are all still small enough that I’m more concerned with growth than production. If my trees were more mature I’d probably only fertilize if there appeared to be a deficiency (in ground) or lightly fertilize annually if in a pot. There are specially formulated Citrus fertilizers you can buy that are for fruit bearing trees, but I haven’t tried them personally.
Why would you want the trifoliate to grow large, it is a rootstock variety. Unless you are trying to get fruits so you can plant seeds for rootstock seedlings?
I just cut back someones large trifolate tree that was a over grown rootstock of the orange tree. This rootstock trifolate is over 10ft tall with large thorns and the branches are so big it is difficult to cut it with just using a hand shears.
I hear the cuttings can be rooted rather easily so I might try to graft a few and root a few of these fat branches I cut today.
Thanks that makes sense. I will do that too this year. I didn’t get a lot of growth on a bunch of them last year and this is probably why (across lemon, lime, mandarins, oranges).
I want fruit from the tree.
Ok, sounds good. My FD tree is old (30yrs) and large. I get about 100 fruits on the tree every year. I only grow out the fruits to get seeds to use as rootstock for my good tasting citrus varieties I grow. But I did speak with a guy who says he like to use the juice to make some type of alcoholic drink by mixing it with something. So I ended up juicing all the fruits and gave him the juice, planted the seeds for my rootstock.
I did taste a few fruits by squeezing out the juice and it was not terrible like some people say, but boy was my juicer messed up from the resin that sticks to the bowl. I didn’t know people use the juice for cooking or other things.
I’m in Zone 6 and this is the only citrus that will grow here unprotected. I’m growing it mainly for the novelty. My family and I farm and I have aspirations of starting a small nursery soon as well. I hope to be able to have trifoliate available in my nursery.
I’m so glad that you mentioned that resin messed up your jucier. Now I’ll be sure not to use my good juicer.
Yup, it won’t come off when you scrub it with dish soap. You will need to use alcohol or something stronger. I ended up using Goo Gone spray and it removed it.
Here’s my FD tree with the fruits.
For cleaning resin off tools I recommend scrubbing with oil instead of soap. Whatever is on hand; olive oil, butter, the oil floating on top of the peanut butter, used fry oil, bacon grease… Really just any oil.
I use oil for just about anything that soap doesn’t work for and it almost always works.
I was able to try a trifoliate orange fruit yesterday. It was about the size of a ping pong ball and had the characteristic fuzz on the rind. Rather than trying it straight, I juiced the fruit into a glass and added sugar and water to make a drink. Both my wife and I thought that the resulting drink was pleasant with some normal lemon lime flavors and what we thought was a floral element. We also both tasted the fruit directly after trying the sweetened diluted version and thought that the direct taste also wasn’t bad (though not something we would eat like an orange). When tasting directly, I did notice some resin residue left on my teeth. I also felt resin residue on my fingers after cutting and handling the fruit. From my perspective, the taste wasn’t that bad and could be useful for seasoning and drinks, but the resin residue would be annoying when processing.
I like cooking with all citrus leaves. I feel like they all small and taste like kaffir leaves.
I won’t touch bitter orange though
I tried to make marmalade from trifoliate oranges. It did not go well. In fact, every aspect of the attempt went poorly:
Growing: The Flying Dragon variety is very beautiful, especially in the wintertime, but it’s also invasive in some areas. Either it suckers or it’s very successful at reseeding itself because trifoliate orange tree volunteers appear around it when left to its own devices.
Harvesting: The ubiquitous thorns have some kind of chemical on or in them that, when they prick you, causes pain for hours afterward. It’s not as painful as a wasp sting, but absolutely noticeable.
Processing Efficiency: It takes a long time to separate the usable portion of the fruit from the unusable portion because the fruits are small and primarily made up of rind and seed. Only about 25-30% of the fruit is usable, and 90% of the usable portion is just juice.
Processing Cleanup: There’s a substance in the fruit (I’m not sure whether it’s localized in the flesh, rind, or juice) that turns into sticky resin after a few minutes of exposure to the air. It’s very, very difficult to wash off tools and utensils. I actually had to toss my citrus juicer because it was utterly impossible to get the resin out of its nooks and crannies, and I didn’t want to risk exposing my dishwasher to that horrid stuff.
Flavor: While the juice has an interesting grapefruit-lemon-floral flavor when raw, cooking it makes it become terribly bitter. I didn’t even include any rind in the juice and it was still unusable. I had to toss the whole batch.
I was growing two types of trifoliate, FD and Kuharske. After almost 2 years in ground I grafted over them with clementine and Kishu. Trifoliate seeds are cheap enough that I will just buy them rather than wait 10 years to be able to supply myself. I manually cut off most of the thorns off all my citrus (arctic frost is the worst offender) and I knew eventually these two would be too much of a pain. If I had a large farm I’d certainly grow a hedge of them somewhere though.
Laura, that is interesting that you actually found some FD volunteers growing near you tree, I have never seen one near my tree. Are you sure you tree is the contorted Flying Dragon variety? The thorns are long and curved.
Your description on your trifoliate orange sound more like the Poncirus trifoliata which does not have the curved thorns.