Hi every one, hi Man-Go-Bananas, In January I grew lemons, apples and kumquats as I said I would. They are all doing rather well. I have a couple of questions. 1-Lemons I planted some lemon seeds a month ago in Jiffy Easy pellets. I hope you all know what they are - small soil packs. I have kept them indoors in a light windowsill. Now they have grown very nicely, they are around 5-7 cm tall and have nice healthy looking leaves. The thing is their roots have started to come out of the bottom of the soil pellet. I want to make bonsai out of these trees. should I cut off the roots as they come out? Should I just let it be? Or should I transplant them quickly into a pot. The roots which have come out seem to be drying out. 2-Kumquats The Kumquats were planted in January too. Some I started in Jiffy easy pellets and some in wet paper towel. All of them are now transplanted in Jiffy easy pots, which are pots made of some sort of cardboard it seems, with potting soil. The baby trees look as if they can't stand their own weight even tho they are so small still. Should I put a stick or something to support them? And how? I want to keep these trees as small as possible too. What do you suggest? 3- Apples I started some of the apple seeds in January and some a little later after being kept in the fridge for a while. They are all growing nicely except for three of them which I kept outside in the cold and snow and they are sprouting but on the soil, I see a kind of white colored fungus (mold) growing. should I throw them away. The rest of them are OK. some have even grown another set of leaves. In order to dwarf them should I be pinching out the new set of leaves? Thank you all in advance for your help. Cheers

Thanks mrclint for the link and stanofh I do have a tr hovey also that I got for a cheap price that was very reasonable. I got it from Florida hill nursery for $6.99+shipping. As I understand it was quite hard to get one of these baby when they first were release, but now a lot of nursery carries them. I've also seen them at quite a bit higher price on logees site for about 3x as much, but not sure how big their plant they offer are. Mine was about 12 inches. I don't think I'm going to cover up and just see how they do and if I only get green ones before winter comes, I could just make green papaya salad...yummy(mouth watering). If you might want to try your hands at one for a reasonable price I suggest Florida Hill Nursery or Well Spring Nursery.

Damp-off of very young seedlings has never been that much of a problem for me, but I think the reason for that may be how I germinate them to begin with. It's a cue I took from my mother, which is basically to put the seeds in the same pot (around the edges of the pot) with an adult plant then water the adult plant the way I normally would. It means I don't use bottom heat and whatnot, so things sprout when it naturally becomes warm enough for them, but pretty much I don't worry as much about damp-off because there are older roots using the same water in the same pot. It's when I take the babies out that I experience problems. As I mentioned, I actually put some young Calamondins back with their Rangpur Lime host plant to recover after this winter. The other thing I practice quite a lot is the theory that it's not dead until it's dead and even if I'm sure its dead, it's worth a shot. You wouldn't believe the number of citrus seedlings and cutting grown figs I had come back to life after the moving issue the spring before last. I actually use the much maligned self watering pots, but not as self watering pots. The designers would say I'm using them totally backwards. I'll go down my line of trees and tip them to dump the water if I notice water actually standing in any of the reservoirs. (I can't imagine using them to "self water" because what that really does is create a high water table for root rot.) If you've ever taken a moment to look at one of those things empty, the bottom of the pot that sits inside the reservoir is like a pasta strainer. So long as the reservoir is always empty, drainage isn't a problem.

Oh yeah, I forgot to say... Many types of fruit trees are almost always propagated vegetatively (cuttings, grafted trees, etc). Most apples for instance are unlikely to produce good fruit when grown from seed. Are you only interested in seed grown trees or are you just trying to find out how long it will take for you to grow your own fruit?