mine went into the greenhouse for the last time. getting tired of moving them in, out, in, out, lol. temps are staying below 80, so inside it isnt to hot anymore. plus I caught my dog with a lime branch in her mouth.

{{gwi:633659}}

Hey Phoebe,
PLEASE,PLEASE,PLEASE, be very carefull when considering ordering from Logees. They really have missed the mark lately. I had som serious trouble with them this spring and another member here also had trouble with them. He actually recieved a free plant for all the hassle and troubles that they had given him and the freakin plant came infested with all kinds of critters including MAGGOTS!! I bet you could surf the net and find a Turunji citron tree that is larger and more affordable than what Logees is selling! Just my opinion.
I am going to have to haul everything in for the night. I am setting up my "grow room" so I can keep some of my prized fruit trees indoors but some of my tropicals, cacti and succulents will go back out tomorrow. They are forcasting lows in the mid 30's tonight, YIKES!!! Thank god I got my 600 watt HPS light from HID HUT in the mail today!
Andrew

Oh, wow, Andrew, thanks for the warning; I haven't had any trouble with them so far except they sent a 2" Key Lime inst. of the 5" I had ordered once but they replaced it and I got to keep the small one. So far the stuff all looks good, no bugs. But this may be what Mike was talking about when he obliquely warned me likewise.
However, I have surely a third of everything they sell at this point (not just citrus....love the dwarf papyruses) and I have been well pleased, but I am REAL aware that things can go direly wrong at any time for a given buyer and others are looking around wondering why there's a problem. My own fracas with Glasshouse Works comes to mind.....after the guy called 19 times (I counted) trying to get me to take back a bad review, I didn't and I left Dave's Garden forums. Just too much hassle.

So thanks again, I've bought everything citrus from them anyway if I'm looking at their new introductions and now am avidly watching Four Winds.

This week I sprayed my trees with manganese and did another desultory web search for a Sunburst tangerine tree. It's a good thing I'm not actually in the market for one yet because I'm having a hard time finding one from a grower that can/will ship. Most of my week was taken up by the Cold War, though, leaving only an hour or so every evening for my plants.

This week ALL the citrus I had ordered came in at once, from Larry's Orchids and Guerney. Six plants. The Guerney's was a very small "tangerine," not really well identified.

The Larry's Orchids plants (it's a largish eBay business) do seem to be be grafted, but I was amazed to see they had been grown -- for a long time -- in a small, narrow plug, and just put in a bigger pot with some peat moss thrown in loosely to make it look better. They were just one stem, no branching much.

Hmmmmmmmm. They were pruned well, though. And labeled fully and carefully, so that was good. These were NOT the quality plants I had gotten a couple weeks earlier from Logee's, however.

I think my next adventure in ordering citrus will be Four Winds -- my first with them. They have a lot of good offerings...

Received a one-year Kishu mandarin from 4 Winds, transplanted it into a version of 5:1:1. All 3 tress are inside since last month and seem to be holding their own. Crossing fingers that my Meyer lemons hang in there (so to speak) until harvest, it will be my first. I purchased a 55 watt LED red/blue light panel, adding to my 14 watt panel from last year. I haven't the foggiest idea whether these work well or not, because I get good natural light indoors in a heated sunroom. Last year at this time I was battling fungus gnats and scale (although I didn't know about the scale). This year, thanks to the help of people on this forum, some 5:1:1 (sans peat moss) and FE, I don't see a single bug - yet. Best of luck to everyone through this winter!

Took a 25 gallon Clementine and planted it in a raised bed. I purchased this tree in a 15 gallon pot early this year and planted it in the 25 gallon pot. The roots were just starting to reach the outer edges of the pot and had not started circling yet.

I took an 18 gallon RubberMaid Tote and drilled two 1/64th inch holes on the bottom edge about 12 inches apart. I set it so the holes are about 12 inches away from the trunk and fill it with about 10 gallons of water. It delivers a slow steady stream that soaks in rather than running off for a nice deep watering.

I got the idea from this Youtube video. I realized I needed a lot more water than the system in the video. After looking around the house I decided to go with the RubberMaid Tote to deliver more water.

Video link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUbfpkNEslw

What I did with citrus this week.
The temps dipped in the 30's twice this wk, and 40's the remainder. Figured it was time they come inside for winter.

This summer has been exceptionally windy. I don't know how many times citrus fell, spilling soil onto the ground.

I removed felled leaves from a Maple tree. Afterwards,
I mixed up a batch of soils in one large container, adding the new mix in each citrus pot a few inches below container rims.

Then, I inspected trunks for root stock, which, thankfully, none were present. I also checked for insects. Bug free.

I then hosed each plant, soil and foliage, let air-dry.
Next, I sprayed each tree with my home-made insecticide. Last, each tree was brought indoors.

I will add one more application of insecticide using Fish Emulsion and Super Thrive.

Besides watering and spraying, God can watch over my trees. Toni

Tomorrow will be my big day..I will be abck to report..What a great thread..

The FE really works...I just hope it worked for many others!

Mike

I wrote Logee's to ask when they would have more grafted citrons --- they answered rather stiffly that they only reproduce the citron Turunji by cuttings and seed and never by grafting. Apparently it's a fraught religious issue, and I had misunderstood their catalog! I find the whole religious "etrog" thing rather creepy. If you wonder what I mean, try looking up "etrog" on eBay as I did and I think you may be surprised......I was.

Citrus use is older than forever and the stories around various citrus are strange and dramatic.

An Italian grocer/restaurant in Baltimore, De Pasquale's, has large halved candied citrons from Italy, where Diamante citron is produced commercially for the candied fruit market, kept in a glass jar to sell, (a good 6 - 7" long and maybe 4" wide). We went there lately for good olive oil and such and I'm still kicking myself that I didn't get a candied citron for fruitcake and cookies and maybe give up the idea of growing one. I may well go back.

I bought a Tango mandarin from Home Depot for next to nothing. $4.98. It's about 1/2 inch dia. and was in a sleeve until I transplanted it to a 5 gal last week. It is loving it's new home and I'll bet it will produce next winter. It came with a do not move out of the locally label, due to the Asian citrus psyllid. That is probably why it was so cheap. Anyway it is growing so rapidly that the citrus leaf miners have found it. That's one pest I'm just going to have to live with.

Well, I bought several 5 gal. semi-dwarf trees: a Bearss Lime, Pixie Tangerine, Algerian Tangerine, Melogold Grapefruit and a Moro Blood Orange, and 2 15 gal. trees: Rio Red Grapefruit and a Cocktail Grapefuit. I'm going to my local nursery to pick up some trunk protectors and T rat traps I'm going to zip tie to my Anna apple tree and in my Meyer Lemon, as well as up in my Rio tree to try to see if I can control the rats (this is so disgusting I can't hardly stand it), as well as pick up some Volck Oil and Spinosid to spray for Citrus Leafminer that we're all struggling with here in N. San Diego County. I back an 80 acre abandoned orange orchard, so there's no controls over there, and I get all the bad stuff floating over into my yard, which includes leafminers. Going to carefully dig some wells around all my trees, do a light fertilizing and some compost in the wells and next weekend, see if I can run a new station drip line to all the citrus and fig trees. I also I might hang some pheromone traps, too. Between spraying and the traps, I am hopeful I'll be able to get ahead of the leafminers. I don't want them damaging my new trees. I don't think I'll get much more growth or flush since it's October, but if we get a round of warmer weather, it can happen.

Patty S.

Patty, my God, that is horrible..I never realized how bad some people have it even though you have the perfect growing weather! I keep wishing to grow citrus where you are, and then I see all the problems associated with tree there..It is so sad..I hope your trees do well.

As for me, I just took, my thank God, bug free trees out of the popup and set them outside for the warm rains about to descend upon us..Thunder and lighting should awaken them a bit..

There are many blooming, although I forgot to water a couple and let them dry out too much, which caused all the leaves to fall off..Stupid me..I forgot how much more I need to water in that warm popup house....

I also put some trees into my plant room and sprayed them all down with FE again before doing so..I also brought a few to my work where they sit in front of HUGE sunny windows..

I guess I will be able to leave some outdoors for a few more days...

I have yet to bring in any for the year. I had brought some in for a night twice so far but that is it. My 'Dancy' tangerines are all orange now but still need to grow for at least another month. Man, I wish they could just stay out for that month. I know the heat helps sweeten them up. I have picked several meyer lemons all ready. My keylime has almos tripled in size this year. I did a lot of pruning on it which in turn kept it from blooming.
My Oro's are still hanging in there but no good growths yet. I also forget how often I need to water when they are in the gritty mix.
Andrew

Yup, Mike, it's a double edged sword for us. Perfect weather to grow citrus, and my extremely neglected Meyer Lemon is a perfect example. I stopped counting the fruit on the 8' semi-dwarf at around 150-200. This is Lemon Country for sure, lol!! But, people aren't the only critters who love to live here :-) Because we don't have any hard freezes, bugs proliferate all year round. Rats hang around, too, along with ground squirrels, pocket gophers and rabbits. I have to put snake fencing up to keep the rattlers out, but that also keeps out our wonderful San Diego Gopher Snake, that is the #1 predator of all the rodent varmits, unfortunately. So, I have to take a multi-pronged approach to keeping unwanted harmful vistors from my trees, and without excessive harm to the environment, bees, hawks, snakes and my dog. I'm going to have to set up bait stations in my trees and on my chain link fence, and hope that the rats go under a bush to die. If a hawk picks up a dying rat or a snake nabs it, they'll also succumb to the poison. Not so great. And the water issues down here make it really expensive to have large yards or run a commercial orchard (hence the demise of the orchard behind me - they were fined out of existence by the Water Authority). My water bill is between $400 and $600, and I'm on drop, have water wise landscaping and almost no lawn. And, our entire neighborhood, every home having at least one citrus tree (more like 3 to 10) is battling CLM. I had to laugh about a the definition of serious infestation being at 40% of new flush. Mine is 100% as is everyone else in the neighborhood. But, regular spraying every 3 weeks with Spinosad and Volck Oil will get this under control. I'll have to do one round now, and then again, in spring or when I see a flush, which can happen if we get a little heat wave in the winter. I have complete respect for commercial citrus growers out here. I don't remember it being this bad growing up as a kid. Not sure why we're having all these issues. I'm sure it's linked to climate change in some way, and that stuff like this is cyclical in nature. So, "this too shall pass", I'm sure, eventually! Until then, it's sure a lot more work to grow a citrus tree in the ground out here. But,I could be hauling in trees to a greenhouse, so I really can't complain too loudly!! Once I get everything in and set up, I'll post a pic.

Patty S.

Regarding "etrog" -- what's creepy about Jewish traditions?

Here is a link that might be useful: etrog on wikipedia

Lets see, this week I picked off all the remaining fruit and watered in some fertilizer. Now all I have to do is spray them with some Sevin to kill off the remaining leaf-miners and sit back and watch them bloom and explode with new growth.