- Citrus is by far one of my favorite fruits to grow.
As you can see, this grapefruit is absolutely popping off.
It's one of the first things I saw when I moved in here
at the epic homestead.
In today's video, we're gonna talk about mistakes
that you might be making with citrus.
Let's get a better understanding of our citrus trees
so we can grow them and get huge epic harvests like this
and not something barren and sad.
Before we get into mistake number one,
let's just take a quick look at the cross-section
of this grapefruit,
which typically isn't ripe until February.
I mean, that's pretty dang good right there.
Where I am in my citrus hedgerow,
10 or 11 citrus coming down here, we put in last February.
So, almost a year ago now.
What I wanna show you is a pruning mistake
that you might be making on citrus
that you actually would wanna do on other trees.
So out here in the back on this royal apricot tree,
it's a good time to look at the structure of this tree
because it's winter.
So, it's dropping its leaves
or it's beginning to drop its leaves.
And you can see the canopy is nice and spread out.
I pruned this awhile back to open up the middle
to allow more air flow,
which is what you really don't wanna do with citrus.
What I have here is my Moro blood orange
out in the front yard.
And you can see it's got a nice dense canopy,
which is what citrus wants.
It actually wants a tight dense canopy
where the interior of the plant, the trunk, et cetera,
it's actually not exposed.
So unlike other fruit, you don't wanna come in
with your pruning shears,
and just start snipping away to increase airflow.
It's not going to prefer that.
And so, just let it be.
It's gonna have a lot of fruit
on the lower one-third of the plant.
It needs all of those leaves and that protection
from the sun to generate the energy to produce those fruit.
As a follow-up on that pruning mistake,
you can actually prune at a time
where you're removing any chance for the plant to fruit.
So, take a look.
We have some "Nagami" kumquat here.
They tend to fruit from November through January or so.
And if I was to prune right before November like October,
and like I came in and I did some shaping cuts here,
then I've probably removed a lot of the growing tips
that are gonna produce all the kumquat
that are sitting right here,
so make sure that both on a species level
and a variety level, that you look up
when it's going to fruit,
and do not prune before that, prune after that.
So here's an example of a Valencia orange
that has gone a little haywire.
It's thrown up some really aggressive shoots
that I can prune for shape if I want.
Now, my situation is kind of interesting
because I've planted my citrus so close together.
My goal is to create what I'm calling the citrus hedgerow.
Eventually, these will all blend together,
and they'll ripe and successively,
you'll sort of have this wall of citrus fruit.
That being said, I have to prune for that purpose.
So I'm gonna come through and actually top down
a little bit of growth here.
I don't need to worry so much
about potential fruit sacrifice in this case
because I'm past my window,
but also because in the first couple of years
and in the upcoming mistake,
I'll show you why you actually may want
to remove some fruit.
We're back here at the Moro blood orange,
the single orange on the tree.
Why just one?
Well actually, there were more than one
before I did the unthinkable and actually cut them off.
And the reason why is if you have young citrus,
you can actually hamper their growth
vegetatively quite a bit
by trying to get three or four citrus
in your first year of growth.
It's better to set your plan up for success
and sacrifice the fruit early on in the tree's life
so it can put out all this vegetation
so that in the following years,
the structure of the tree is better
as well as the production of the tree is better.
So what I did and it hurt a lot I have to say,
is I plucked off all but one or two on most of the trees
down this row.
It's very difficult to do
but you can still do stuff with unripe citrus.
You can make oils and cleaning products.
There's all sorts of different things you can do.
Check out Epic Homesteading, our secondary YouTube channel
for some ideas over there,
but really it hurts, but you gotta do it.
Take off early fruit on young citrus trees.
The next mistake you can make is one that I've made,
and it is not cleaning up the under canopy
of your citrus area before it's too late.
Pretty straightforward, guys.
You just wanna make sure that you're removing weeds,
especially from the base here 'cause, you know,
a lot of people think that a tree has roots
that go way down deep.
But in fact, a lot of the times trees have feeder roots
that are coming out this way.
And so, weeds on the surface
right next to the base of the plant
are actually taking nutrients from your tree
which you don't want.
So take these bad boys out.
Look at this guy, he was trying to mine for nutrients,
not on my watch.
This citrus is getting it all.
Now I get it, if you're watching this video
in a colder climate, you're thinking,
"Wow Kevin, it must be nice.
"You can sit here in early January.
"It's so hot, you had to take the jacket off
"that you started this video with,
"what do I do in a colder climate with citrus?"
There's a few mistakes that you might make.
It's still possible, and there's a couple of tips
I have for you.
But first of all, it starts out with
proper fall prep and winter care.
So, fertilize for the very last time in fall.
Then, don't do any winter pruning
if you're in a colder climate
because you want as much plant matter
on the citrus as possible to help insulate it.
It doesn't wanna be in a cold climate,
but with proper growing conditions, you can make it work.
So first, if you're a container citrus grower,
which is probably your best option,
if you're in an area that freezes in the winter,
you're going to want to move it indoors.
The way to do that though is to prep it.
So take the container about three weeks
before you're going to fully move it indoors,
bring it into a semi-shaded area
so it gets used to a lesser amount of light
a little bit sooner,
then bring it indoors south-facing window,
ideally, a grow light if you can afford one.
It's going to be the best because remember citrus
doesn't really wanna be in that environment,
but you can support it being in that environment
by giving it a grow light.
If you are an adventurous citrus grower in a cold climate,
a mistake that you might be making
is not protecting the plant during the winter.
So, it's in the ground, I'm not going to say,
"Hey, dig your citrus up."
No, what I'll say is threefold.
Number one, if you know it's gonna be a really cold night,
water beforehand because it's less likely
that the soil will freeze when it's damp
than when it's not that damp.
So that's one tip.
Another thing is to take floating row covers
or frost blankets, and you can actually
wrap the tree canopy in it,
if you know it's gonna be windy, blustery,
maybe sleeting, hail, whatever,
you can make sure that you protect the tree from that.
Then I would say the most important thing really
is taking trunk down here
and wrapping that trunk and protecting it.
So you can take like a cardboard sleeve,
take cardboard kind of mess with the corrugation
a little bit so it's a little more pliable,
and then you can wrap it around the trunk of the tree.
You can also put frost blankets around that.
And finally, a weird tip that I've seen recommended
certainly festive during the winter
is to take a pack of Christmas lights
and weave them throughout all of your trees.
A little bit of extra warmth coming out of those lights,
sometimes seems to maybe make a little bit of a difference.
I don't know, it looks cool.
It might work for you,
I've seen it recommended here and there.
I've got a long way to go on my budding citrus orchard
but at least for now I can enjoy
one of these beautiful grapefruits.
These tips should help you have quite a good citrus season,
really with plant growing,
it's more about avoiding mistakes
than it is about doing the right things.
So hopefully this video helped.
I'm gonna take a bite of this grapefruit right now.
I'll see you in the next one.
Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.
(slow jazz instrumental music)
It's actually pretty good, it might be ripe.