Kumquats are one of my favorite citrus to grow of all time.
And as luck would have it, they're actually one of the easiest as well.
Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening where it's my goal to help you grow a
greener, and perhaps more orange, thumb with kumquats,
one of the most prolific citrus and one of the easiest that you can grow.
I have a really fond place in my gardening heart for the kumquat because it was
actually something I foraged for quite a bit in 2019 during my apocalypse grow
survival challenge where I was living off of my garden, fishing,
foraging for a whole month. And it was just a beautiful sweet treat.
And so in today's video we're going to go over all the critical elements of its
care as well as pot this one up. So I have this beautiful specimen.
It's probably a couple of years old from Fast Growing Trees who are the sponsor
of the video. And so we're going to go on over to a hidden gem,
a secret place called Planter Paradise,
which I just gave the name away of so it's not secret anymore,
to get a pot for it. So without further ado,
cultivate that Like button for Epic quat harvest and let's get into the video.
Well it finally happened guys, I'm out of pots.
So we have to head on over to Planter Paradise, which I've never been to,
but I have on good authority has some Epic and affordable large pots.
So come on with me. Let's go.
So I'm going with this guy for the kumquat tree and then the smaller one right
there I'm going to use for the key lime and for the Clementine.
Now that we're back from Planter Paradise, we have this Epic $21 15 inch pot.
Are you serious? I mean, look at this thing. It's pretty sexy, I have to say,
and it was pretty cheap, so I'm very happy about that.
But let's talk about some varieties that you should consider.
You have probably the one you're going to find most of the time,
which is the Nagame kumquat. That's the one I have here.
Very beautiful specimen. There's also Meiwa, which is a rounder fruit.
Nagame is a little bit more oval shaped and then you have Marumi,
which I think is a hybrid of either Meiwa and something else or Meiwa and
Nagame, I don't remember.
But that one is also much more round and it's a little bit more spicy in flavor.
As we pot this kumquat up, let's talk about some of the elements of its care.
Light, it's going to really want eight hours of sun plus a day.
It's a full sun plant. It's a citrus guys, so that's what we have to give it.
As far as container growing indoors,
you can give it a south facing window. That's your best bet.
I guess you could do a west or an east facing if that's all you have.
If you really are committed to getting fruit while growing in containers
indoors, you may also want to supplement with a grow light because it's citrus.
I mean this, this thing is a heavy,
heavy set of fruit and so it puts out quite a bit. And soil,
let's talk about that.
With citrus I am of the belief that it makes sense to just buy a citrus mix
instead of trying to engineer your own type of mix.
That's because citrus requires nutrient rich,
but relatively well draining soil and not a lot of,
not a lot of classic mixes provide that.
And so that's why I just went with a citrus mix that I also bought at Planter
Paradise.
When you're repotting and it looks like we've got this at the perfect point
because not only is there no real root circling at the bottom here,
but it's not root bound in any sense.
When you're repotting a citrus what I like to do at least,
it looks like we filled it a little bit too high, is you want to match.
You don't want to bury it deeper than you normally would and you don't want to
bury it much farther above the pot.
So I'm going to take a little handful of Espoma Citrus Mix here.
We'll just mix a little bit of that in. This,
this potting mix has some in there already so we don't need to go too crazy,
but you know just a little feed cause kumquat is a heavy feeder. It,
it sets fruit quite a bit and it sets fruit later into the season compared to
most citrus. And so let's go a little bit lower there.
So you do want to give it a little bit of extra food and with citrus again,
get the citrus mix and then just get a citrus specific fertilizer.
Your life's going to be a lot easier and it honestly is easier than DIY'ing it.
When watering citrus, specifically citrus in containers,
let's talk about why I chose this particular pot. I chose, first of all,
a terracotta pot because it's porous and so water will wick out.
It's an unglazed terracotta,
so that will help keep the soil not overly moist.
At the same time the terracotta I just think looks pretty nice.
But in a container it's going to dry out more than normal,
which citrus tends to actually enjoy.
It can handle a bit of drought and sometimes is even somewhat improved,
but you still need to water it more often than you would in ground just because
again, it's not growing in ground.
There's not a complete reservoir of water to hang out and drink from.
It just doesn't have that ability. But again, when it comes to watering,
you're going to have the most problems if you overwater instead of
underwatering.
A lot of plants will suffer if you underwater them and will kind of thrive if
you overwater them. Citrus is the opposite. You really don't want to do that.
So I'm just giving it its very first drink in this new pot,
which will be a thorough drink. But after that,
I don't expect to have to water this for at least a week.
We've got our guy in its new home.
Let's talk about some care after it's transplanted. Number one kumquats,
like many citrus,
but kumquats especially seem to be a little more cold intolerant than other
plants. So if you're growing this outside of natural zones,
which would be eight to 11,
so you're in zone six or seven and you're really trying to push the kumquat,
then it may make sense to put it in a container that you can move.
So you can move it indoors if some cold fronts start to roll through because it
will really suffer from that. Now pruning, you don't have to prune too much.
I especially don't have to prune cause if we look at the way that the folks at
Fast Growing Trees decided to prune this,
you can see we have our main stem here and you have one offshoot and another
offshoot and it's been very nicely manicured so that the new growth is coming
outwards like this.
Sometimes with citrus or really a lot of different trees you're going to get
these cross branches that go through and you can take those off.
You can also prune for shape,
but you want to make sure and not prune when flowers are starting to form.
So like November through April, you don't want to prune.
After the fruit has set for the year,
and sometimes you have a kumquat variety that even fruits multiple times a year.
So you have to be careful about that. But if you prune,
you're removing the ability for it to grow that fruit.
And so you do have to be careful about that.
But really it's just pruning for shape, pruning for manicure.
If it's inground it's a different story because those can get quite large.
So you want, you want to even prune for size.
But here this is very nicely manicured already.
I don't need to come through and do any clipping.
And then let's talk pests and diseases.
Most of the disease that you're going to run into with a kumquat is probably
just an overwatering issue, some sort of root borne disease,
which most of the time is solved just by the variety that you pick.
So if you get a nice variety, it's nice and healthy,
then you're completely fine. But there are some pests.
Spider mites can really attack citrus.
And we know that because spider mites love low humidity environments.
So the way to counteract that is to,
you can blast the whole thing with cold water,
which is going to increase the humidity dramatically or you can hit it with a
little bit of neem oil.
You're also going to potentially get some sort of mealy bug or citrus scale type
of pest,
which is really easy to identify on these dark green leaves because they're
white. And so you can look in the crevices of the leaves,
do a little inspection and if it's a small plant you can come through and wipe
them off with like rubbing alcohol soaked cotton swabs. If it's a larger plant,
you may want to actually use some sort of treatment in that case.
But you know as long as you keep this in its own place,
away from other areas where you know pests are and you got it from a healthy
supplier in the first place,
you probably won't deal with too many of these problems.
One more tip on fertilizing. Like I said,
it's a heavy setter of fruit and some varieties fruit more than once a year,
which means that instead of giving it like one big dose of fertilizer once a
year, you may want to fertilize it with less, but more often.
It's kind of the opposite of how I recommend like watering your garden,
which is deeper but less often.
With kumquats you may want to just switch that up, less but more often,
especially as they're throwing out fruit.
I mean you guys saw earlier in the video,
the one that I was foraging from last year.
That thing was about eight feet tall probably and six feet wide,
putting out thousands of fruit and that's why my neighbor couldn't use them all
and needed to have someone like me come through and pick it clean. Now,
speaking of how to use it,
the best way in my opinion is just eating it fresh because you can eat the rind
and the rind actually kind of mellows the flavor out.
The flesh can be quite sour if you eat it as is, which is very delicious.
But you know, it's just very intense.
And so I would say eating it fresh is fantastic.
What I've done is I've also juiced them and then mixed them with like a wheat
grass or some sort of more mild juice like celery or carrot,
and that cuts that sourness down and adds in a little more complex flavors.
I find that to be really good. You can make a marmalade or a jam.
You can use it as dessert, rinds you can like put it on your ice cream.
There's 1,000,001 ways to use it. If you follow this guide,
you will have an abundance of kumquat.
So thank you so much for watching the Epic kumquat guide guys.
This is one of the cooler citrus to grow.
If you're in an area that can grow it and you like the flavor,
it's going to give you almost no problems at all.
And so I highly encourage you to grow it. And with that said,
good luck in the garden and keep on growing.