a dwarf mandarin three that looks so
beautiful and produces delicious small
fruits let's look at growing the dwarf
mandarin "kishu"so january is a good time
to start citrus trees if you're buying
the trees now you can also start citrus
trees from seed but they do take a long
time to give fruit so i recommend that you
buy a good grafted plant like this one
you see here and use this kind of a
large container to grow your dwarf
citrus trees
now you can even plant your dwarf
citrus trees in the ground like you saw
with the other citrus tree we are
growing like the dancy tangerine now
the potting mix that I'm using is just
standard potting mix I'm not creating my
own using peat moss and there is a
reason
this dwarf citrus requires a soil pH which
is neutral now if you add a lot of peat
moss your soil becomes acidic and then
you add some garden lime to neutralize
the acidity of the peat moss
so in this case what I've done is I have just
used regular potting soil potting mix and
then I'm just going to be adding more
mix till I see that the plant will
fit into the larger pot
and then you just tap around the pot
just like that the container that you
got your plant in
and a grafted tree is something that
has a rootstock which is a citrus plant
which grows pretty strong something like
citron which not many people like to eat
though its healthy but the rootstock of the
citron is pretty strong so they use it for
most citrus trees and what is done here is
we've crafted the store has grafted a kishu
mandarin plant onto this rootstock as you
can see here we get this plant which
will produce delicious kishu mandarins
I'm trying to seat the plant in the
larger pot now if you don't have a very
large pot that's still ok but just make
sure you get the plant a little bit of
growing room so that doing at least the
first year of planting that would get
some space to grow out now just keep
adding more soil around the plant till
it gets full
and that completes the bulk of your soil
addition for your container
and then watering is very important
as soon as you plant water to make sure that all
the air pockets are closed and at this
time you can add a liquid fertilizer if
you want to i did not do that because
the potting mix that i use does have
some nutrients and so I'm not going to be adding
any more fertilizer here and I kept it
at a sunny location where you get at
least about six to eight hours of Sun
and I certainly go into the sunlight
requirement for the citrus plant but try
to use a container that you have which
is slightly larger than the one you got
and here you can see a transplant this
plant into a different container due to some
other arrangements I was making in my side yard
but as you can see here this mandarin
plant looks pretty healthy and by April
it grew into a pretty large-sized plant
and you can see here this is partial
shade this pot gets about six hours of
Sun every day and the citrus trees that
produce sweet fruit like the mandarins
the oranges they need at least six hours
of Sun now if you're growing Meyer
lemons or some other sour lemons that
are not sweet any citrus that's not
sweet you can get by with a lesser
sunlight maybe like four hours would be
okay but for any sweet fruits you need a
lot of sunlight because it's that
sunlight that really make the fruit
sweet as you can see here in the month
of March the following year the plant is
now flowering like crazy and this plant
produced a lot of flowers i know have
other YouTube viewers that have
mentioned that they had the kishu
mandarin and it was flowering like crazy
and I can completely relate to them this
plant had a lot of flowers
and in the end of april the flowers had
turned into small fruits as you can see
here
a lot of small fruits all around the
citrus plant
now you need to make sure that you add
fertilizer to your citrus plants very well
starting february and i recommend that
you watch my video on fertilizing citrus
plants fruit trees
so that you can get an idea of when to
add fertilizer for your citrus plant now
as far as insects go there is one big
enemy of all citrus plants and that is
the leaf miner and the leaf manner will
devastate your citrus plants so make
sure that if you do get a leafminer
attack follow the video that is there
in your screen right now you will be
able to counter leafminers
this kishu mandarin plant is a dwarf
plant it doesn't really grow that big it
grows more like a shrub than a tree
I always advise my viewers my fellow
gardeners I always advise my fellow
gardeners to buy dwarf trees so that
you optimize your space in your garden
dwarf trees give a lot of harvest you'll
get an abundant harvest while not taking
up a lot of space now unless you're in a
tropical or subtropical area you have to
grow your citrus plant in containers
because although they tolerate cold well
they will not survive a hard freeze so
it's better that you plant your citrus
plants in containers if you're living
in an area that gets a freezing winter
and while the fruits are ripening you can
see that one or two fruits may die and
fall off and that's perfectly fine
there is a limit to how many fruits the
plant can produce now by the time it's
August you've seen that the fruits have
become slightly larger and this plant
doesn't produce very large fruit it
produces fruits that are small actually
smaller not even medium i won't even
call them and medium-sized at least not
in the first year but what i have read
about this mandarin plant is that it
produces slightly larger fruit as it
grows bigger so i'm going to wait and
see for the second year how this plant
produces but these are still decently
sized fruits maybe not for adults but the
kids absolutely love it it's very easy
for them to peel these fruit and then just
gobble them these are seedless there are no
seeds inside them
kids absolutely love it
they just can harvest it right off the plant
and then just skin them very easily
and then pop them in their mouth so the
kids really like it you can even give
these kind of mandarins as a good smack
your kids while they go to school and
even otherwise when you're hanging out
in the garden with such an abundance of
fruits in just the small container you
can imagine how much fun the kids have
and here i'm going to show you by
peeling this fruit you can see how
think the skin is extremely thin skinned fruit
and inside the mandarin you can see
that it's pretty small and you can
pretty much eat them as whole
but they still have the shape of a
standard orange fruit you can even split
the pieces and eat them
and they're absolutely sweet, they taste absolutely sweet
and delicious
just wait for them to ripen on the
vine as with all citrus plants sweet
citrus the earlier you harvest the fruit
the more sour they're going to be
but if you let them ripen on the vine
properly on the tree properly then you
can expect to get some really good
harvest of some delicious fruit
and watering your container generally
depends on how hot it is in your area
and what you see on your screen as a
general guideline and as you can see
here towards the end of the season which
is in January after two years the
citrus plant has produced slightly
larger fruits
towards the end of the harvest season
and this is the best time to harvest
this fruit which is somewhere around
january that's when you get the sweetest
fruit so i think we covered all aspects
of growing this lovely dwarf Mandarin
called kishu I would like to know from you
whether you have tried growing any dwarf
citrus trees and what are your
favorites do you like going dwarf trees or do
you like growing the full sized trees please let
me know why do you think each choice is
better than the other and if you'd like
me to try growing a different citrus variety in
my garden please do let me know in the
comments below and if like this video do
give us a thumbs up and we'll see you again soon
happy gardening!