I plan to air layer my Sumo mandarin tree, but am not sure about the health of the tree growing on its own root. Anyone has experience growing citrus without grafting?
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have airlayered calamondin, valencia orange, and an unnamed tangerine while living in the tropics. They won’t be as vigorous when they are on their own roots but will continue to bear fruit. Airlayered citrus make nice dwarf/potted specimens.
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It varies some based upon variety and citrus type how strong the roots will be, and a main reason for using root stocks on citrus, is because they are better to way better at dealing with conditions in the soil, like disease, like pest, like drought, like less sensitivity to missing micronutrients, like less sensitivity to salty soil, and like sensitivity to wet soil.
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Water rooted a Valencia Orange/Tangerine cross before. Last time I saw them they were about 25 feet tall. In fact my first experience at rooting. The tree annually bore stupid amounts of fruit that made spectacular tangy juice. But were too seedy for eating. Garsh…That was about 1974.
But in fact the third cutting; I planted very close to the house and it never got over 8 foot tall. Nor produced a lot of fruit.
In hindsight I should be shot. Because I received the cuttings from a man who operated a very popular juice shop in downtown Jacksonville Florida. It was his juice in his signature OJ he sold. Not sure where he got it. But they grew it since the 1950’s.
I need to go back and see if the current owners still have it.
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I don’t understand the comment about needing to be shot. Did you do something stupid?
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May it is the too close to house part.
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Perhaps. Though I have citrus right against the house and they grow fine
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Yes. I should have harvested scions from it and kept it alive. That old historic juice shop was bulldozed in the late 1990’s. And I’m sure the grower has passed on.
Tens of thousands of people enjoyed that tangy juice every month. Now possibly it is lost.
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The 2 planted in the open had nothing dwarf about them. With a 12 foot ladder and being 6’3" ; I could never harvest the whole tree…lol
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I think this is not necessarily going to be true, but certainly will be for some varieties. The answer to “how vigorous will this citrus be on its own roots” will very a lot among varieties. Sometimes you can find a reference to the growth habit of the ortet in the patent, for any variety that was patented (though presumably you’d only air layer the ones with expired patents). I think the assumption will be that most things on their own roots form standard size trees, but obviously that’s not going to be universally true.
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As others mentioned, vigor may be lacking, variety depending. Some varieties are very vigorous, some aren’t. Sumo has a fair bit of pumelo ingression, so it’s probably a pretty vigorous, large-growing tree, but that’s just a guess on my part. One of its parents, ponkan, is known to be vigorous, but also fairly heat-loving and cold intolerant compared to most true mandarins.
A secondary issue is rooted cuttings and presumably air-layer citrus take a few years to really develop good anchoring roots. You may have to do a bit of management to prevent wind damage and foster good root growth (staking, but also allowing some movement to stimulate rooting out).
What might be more of an issue is disease and root problems. Most rootstocks have a lot more resistance to root diseases, excessive moisture, and certain diseases. If you have very well draining soil that’s also fairly rich, and live outside of areas with significant phytophthora, root weevil, citrus nematode, etc, infestations, and aren’t dealing with CTV, then own-root citrus is probably going to be ok. And if you have any HLB issues, own-root Sumo for sure isn’t gonna last long.
Honestly though, might as well graft if you’re going to go through the effort of air-layering. If you have a decent-sized rootstock it’ll have a head-start over own-root. And you can pick a rootstock to fit your soil and growing size limitations.
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More Citrus is amenable to being rooted then most types of treed fruits. Size is generally not an issue. But nutrient uptake and root structures seem to be variable. Hence rootstock.
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Very informative. I am in houston with clay soil. But I have always mixed in a few cubic feet of humus before planting trees. The Sumo has a very vigorous branch bearing no fruits. Hence, I want to air layer it by convenience. If I have some rootstocks, I would graft instead of airlayering.
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citrus airlayering is common practice in nurseries in asia. Maybe it is just true for the citrus mentioned which have grown for years, but it does make me think it is universal considering the developmental habit of citrus
airlayering a juvenile(yet-to-fruit) citrus seedling will produce a more vigorous specimen compared to airlayering a mature(already fruiting) citrus stem of the same species
citrus generally has tendency to produce a primary stem as a youngster(developing a main trunk) and be very thorny, and will lose thorns as the stems mature. A cloned seedling/juvenile citrus will still be thorny and will still have to wait several years to pass juvenile status.While my self-rooted clones all developed bushy growth with no main trunks and no thorns even if planted on the ground.
maybe there is an intermediary stage(adolescent stage) when there is still some vigor but already fruiting. If that’s the case then my self-rooted specimens must be from decades’ old clones
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You can buy Trifoliate orange seeds cheaply for rootstock.
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Yes. Seeds should work in two years. I also started to root trifoliata cuttings to save some time.
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Delete
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Rooting trifoliate to use as rootstock makes more sense to me than rooting Sumo. If you’d like something faster, surely there are nurseries allowed to ship to Texas who carry rootstocks? Usually rootstock is pretty cheap.
I don’t know much about growing in Houston, but I think it’s safe to assume you get plenty of heat for sumo to be happy, haha. Maybe it’s worth rooting just to see how it does, especially if you don’t have any rootstock handy.
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Buying funcy citrus varities in Texas from outside is difficult. If not already available at the Brazoria Citrus Nursery or Saxon Becnel & Sons, you have to get it through the Citrus Budwood Certification program.
They have some limitated varieties. They can order the budwoods for you from California CCPP or Florida DPI, but charge $150 processing fee.