August 2018 Citrus pics (almost fall edition)
I don't think an August thread was posted and when I saw Steve "extending" the July one by 10 days I thought well.... :-P :-D
Took some pics this morning and have to apologize for the lilac foliage behind them because some of it looks like citrus (I also got some FW trees delivered last evening that I will post separately) -
Eureka -
Santa Teresa (in the small pot) -
Tango (coming back from winter branch dieback) -
Shiranui (with its one fruit) -
Kishu (recovering from winter scale) -
Australian Red (Center/Blood) Lime -
And its fruit closeup (I counted 14 developing fruit on it) -
Comments (98)
jenny_in_se_pa
5 years agoRelated Discussions
All things Citrus 4 August 2015
Comments (255)Thanks so much Cory, like my avatar says when I embark on a hobby I am deadly serious about it! But I know I still have tons to learn and look forward to spending more time with you guys absorbing your knowledge. For example I just recently averted crisis I think. My citrus has been doing so well in my room that I recently moved in about 6 of my massive super hot container peppers thinking I could keep em going all winter. Major disaster almost occurred when an aphid infestation exploded and I am still managing it. I removed all the peppers and have been drenching every citrus in the sink a couple times a week with insecticidal soap and I think I nipped it in the bud luckily. Rookie mistake! Thanks Steve! Appreciate it and thanks for all your great tips so far your light buckets are super cool. Yes it is a hopeful time for us in Canada! I hope the positivity extends to my trees and yours!...See MoreMarch 2018 citrus pictures and stories
Comments (144)Jinny I don't really know how Seville's grow over time but they get to a very quick jump start. I am growing mine in windows with out additional light and they are beating the pants off my kumquat seedlings with them under 16 hours of very bright lights. I plan to graft an NZL to my Seville sour orange and grow it outside against the south wall of my house 8 feet east of my NZL on C35. NZL on US897 Volunteer Pumpkin and lambsquarters share the bucket with the NZL that nearly died. The lambsquarters will be remove to another pot and the pumpkin will remain to serve as a dryness indicator. The cause of decline was cause by the container. I failed to notice that while the bucket had great side aeration hole it did not have any bottom holes. This year I decided to water heavily every week and use the vacuum chamber under the pot to draw excess water out and keep the moist soil aerated. With out the bottom holes the roots did not get the air and they rotted while all my other tree did great. Steve...See MoreSpringbank Park London, ON, Plant Swap 2018 edition
Comments (179)flowergirl_on My Plumeria was in water after I dipped it in Stimroot. Roots started sprouting and then I saw green coming. Did not realize they were flower buds at the time. A couple got bigger and then blossomed. I have never had a Plumeria plant. Wow. There it sat in water with flowers. Just today I put it in a pot with some cactus type soil and watered it. Hopefully it doesn't go into shock. I am the one in shock. Didn't think it would flower so soon. Wow !!! Rosco: I do love the colour and I am enjoying it for sure. That was a bonus....See MoreJune 2018, Week 4, Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head
Comments (89)Rebecca, Stink bug or leaf-footed bug damage on the tomato. I was wondering about C. diff too. My younger sister had it once a few years ago and had to be hospitalized for quite some time. Nancy, We've been hearing occasional fireworks for about a week already. I'm tired of them....and we aren't anywhere near the actual Fourth of July holiday yet. It makes the dogs crazy. Everyone is out mowing grass down short today. Between the heat, lack of rainfall and the fireworks craziness we always have out here in unincorporated parts of the county, people know the grass in the fields needs to be short in case fireworks set their fields on fire. Heavenly Blue is one of the latest MGs to bloom at our place, and they do better in full sun and poor soil than in part shade and good soil, so it helps if you choose them a 'bad' site to grow and don't baby them too much. Otherwise, they can just go on making new foliage forever and forever and forget to bloom for the longest time. Once they start blooming, though, they are so spectacular that you'll forget how aggravating it was to wait forever and forever for them to get their act together. Most of the basil I grow is for the beneficial insects. I ignore it and don't harvest it much, and just let it bloom for them. Our weather is awful again today. It was supposed to be around 97 degrees with a heat index of 103, which certainly sounded better than previous days. So, what have we had so far? An official high temp of 98 (so, very close to forecast so far) at our Mesonet station with a max heat index so far of 109 (oops, they were way off on the forecast for this). At our house is it 100 degrees right now. Our weather refuses to behave. Everything outdoors is just roasting. They had our Mesonet station (and Kenton's, I think it was) down for a while today, and when they brought them back online, both stations changed from a 16" soil moisture level of 0.14 to 0.40, so they either changed malfunctioning moisture sensors or they adjusted the data. Now I don't know what to think, but no matter what their data shows, the ground is miserably dry. The rain is bypassing us, moving from SW towards central OK, so some of you are likely to get rain. Hopefully, you won't get the hail. Jennifer, I hope the dinner is fun and that the animals do well without valium. Megan, There's so many neonics in use that I mostly just grow my own flower transplants from seed nowadays. I tried to buy some plants at HD this past spring, and they had Neonic tags in them (sort of hidden behind the standard plant tag, so if you weren't checking for them you might miss them) so I put them back on the plant racks. At least they are labeling theirs, which most places do not. I used to buy flats and flats of annual flowers in early to mid Spring for maximum impact, but don't buy many now. If I cannot grow them myself or find them at an organic nursery in the DFW metro, then I just live without them. It is hard for me to give flower seedlings the attention they need when I'm wrapped up in growing veggie transplants, especially during winter/spring wildfire season, but I'm getting better at giving them the appropriate amount of attention since buying them is less and less of an option because of the heavy reliance in the bedding plant industry on nionics. For me, growing transplants is easy if I'm not rushing off to fires every day, but almost impossible if we're having a bad fire season. We've been harvesting and eating tons of tomatoes for two months now, so you will not hear any whining coming from my lips. The fruit that set in March-April is mostly all harvested now. We had very little fruitset in May, but those are the ones that are still green now. With the heat cranking up, no rainfall in ages and tons of wind this week, the spider mites are flooding into the garden every time the wind blows and hitting the tomato plants hard. I'm now at the point where I look at the plants and think to myself that I'll be glad when each plant has ripened its last fruit and I can yank it out of the ground, thereby putting it out of its misery. I've been doing a pretty good job killing stink bugs and leaf footed bugs with citrus oil, but normally wouldn't spray it on the plants because it tends to burn the foliage. (Orange oil, at a high enough concentration will strip paint and varnish, so I have to be really careful to mix it up properly and to not spray it on any plant I don't want to risk losing.) It is just that with the plants declining so rapidly and drought officially in parts of our county now, I just do not care. I wouldn't spray it on the leftover tomato plants that I planted at the northern fenceline very late (to serve as host plants for tomato and tobacco hornworms found on the fruit-bearing plants in the main tomato rows) because they have not been hit by herbicide drift or spider mites yet, so they look ridiculously good and might survive until fall if the grasshoppers would leave them alone. I also wouldn't use it on the 8 new tomato plants for fall. They are in containers at the NW end of the garden, in as much shade as I can give them and still expect them to grow any at all. They can have more sun later after they grow and are established. I'm no longer dealing with tons of tiny grasshoppers in the garden. Now I have big huge ones flocking to the garden from the non-irrigated fields around us---thousands of non-irrigated acres. The differential grasshoppers are a huge issue as they really prefer forbs to grasses at this time of the year. I've started letting my Kong sunflowers wilt on purpose, which I'd rather not do, because the differential grasshoppers, which love sunflowers, will usually avoid wilting sunflowers. (Maybe the wilting impacts the leaves in some way the differential grasshoppers do not like?) So now, the dog's sunflowers that are self-sowing natives which border their dog yard are much more appealing to the differential grasshoppers than my garden sunflowers because I am not watering the garden sunflowers but am watering the dog yard sunflowers to turn them into an appealing plant for the differentials. Whatever it takes...... Tim just came in from the Great Outdoors and informed me it is hot out there. Thanks, I told him, I hadn't noticed. I think being at work 5 days a week somewhat skews his perception of the heat here because by the time he arrives home near 7 pm, we usually are a lot cooler than we were just 2 to 4 hours earlier. Today, for the first time in ages, instead of working on something at home, we went to the fire station and worked on various projects. I cleaned the kitchen, filled up the fridges with additional bottled water and Gatorade, inventoried firefighter snacks, etc. I noticed that, in our neighborhood between the fire station and our house, areas that are heavily shaded or that get shade at least half the day still look half decent. Areas that are in full sun? They look pathetic. My garden needs trees in it to shade the plants in hot weather, but I don't want the trees there all the time. Dawn...See Morejenny_in_se_pa
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agojinnylea - I bought a 1 gallon swamp milkweed plant last year, had to repot it multiple times (it's now in an 18" pot), overwintered it and it came back (plus I collected seed pods from last year although some had started to bust and released a few seeds, and those landed in nearby pots and resulted in a few new plants...lol). I actually bought some seeds earlier this month for a bunch of different kinds including the common & tropical. I know some will have to be cold-stratified so will need to work out how I'll handle that (i.e., whether to winter sow or just do the refrigerator method). Everything I have here has to be in a pot because it is a rental. I have a monarch chrysalis that will be eclosing in the next couple days (it's been 12 days and I'm starting to see some dark spots and wing definition) so am juggling all sorts of things here...lol
As an update - here is my NZL (entry) freshly potted in a 10" yesterday in a modified 5:1:1 -
(the sprig of reddish new growth to its right is from my ST)
Here are my other new FW plants - premium Thai (Kaffir) Lime (left) & Thorny Key Lime (right) -
I haven't repotted them yet but got some 12" pots for them.
My variegated pink lemon has a bunch of bare branches but is now sprouting along them and has a bunch of bloom buds -
And some obligatory OT pics - first plumeria blooms (back set on 8/23/18 and front set this morning (8/27/18) -
And a hummer to top it all off!
jenny_in_se_pa thanked poncirusguy6b452xxponcirusguy6b452xx
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoSun has set below the west hill and trees so my plant goes under a lamp that shines on the grafted growth the most. The lamp shines till midnight and comes on at 6 AM. When the sun rises high enough the tree will go into an east window
Stevejenny_in_se_pa thanked poncirusguy6b452xx
uncle molewacker z9b Danville CA (E.SF Bay)
5 years agoWow, some very nice citrus in this thread! I cannot believe that August is almost gone. I just fixed a major irrigation issue so many of my trees will be looking better as they get rehydrated. Here are a few pics taken today in Danville CA.
Smith Red (on Carrizo) with a dwarf MexLime in front:
South Cocktail on Carrizo:
Santa Teresa Lemon on Volk:
Redblush Grapefruit - finally sweet and ready to juice!
jenny_in_se_pa thanked uncle molewacker z9b Danville CA (E.SF Bay)jenny_in_se_pa
5 years agoLOL @ Steve - no APVs (or APV-wannabes) around here. Just tiny, very territorial and skittish dive-bombing birdies. :-D Glad to see your NZL graft doing well and hope you keep us updated on it!
Mike - Yup, I think we like many of the same plants. It makes it hard to choose due to the space constraints - i.e., this is what I'm working with outside -
And yup - this monarch laid eggs on my (2nd year) potted milkweed -
and I found a 4th instar cat on a leaf which is the one that is currently in my Kritter Keeper as a chrysalis -
molewacker - am curious whether your in-ground ST has extra large leaves (compared to your other citrus) or whether some of us are getting the large leaves on our STs due to sun amount and/or rootstock and/or as an artifact of being potted?
As a fruit update, my oldest Eureka lemon looks like this this morning (slowly turning yellow and has gotten softer and somewhat squeezable now) -
It was part of a bloom/fruit set that happened around the end of December after bringing the trees in the first week of November 2017, so it's been on the tree for about 8 months.
Anyone have an idea of how Eurekas hold on the tree (i.e., whether it's better to pick at the above stage or let it go and it "gets better")? I have another smaller one on the tree that is still hard to the touch. The tree finally aborted the cluster of 4 and a cluster of 2. This tree had been purchased from FW in 2016 as a "choice" (which were supposedly 2-year olds) so the grafted tree is 4 this year (I believe it is grafted on Cuban Shaddock - i.e., no trifoliate leaves but huge lemon-like leaves + huge thorns on rootstock shoots).
jenny_in_se_pa
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoMike - the swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) which is what I have right now, is hardy to Zone 3, so no need to protect the pot or anything. The only thing that I have found with it (and have read about it) is that since the milkweeds are summer bloomers, they tend to resprout from the base later in spring, so you think they are dead but they are just slow to come up (mine didn't start sprouting from the base until about the 1st week of May). The common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) which is something I want to try too next year, is also hardy to Zone 3/4. It's the tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica) that is the tender one, only hardy to about Zone 8/9 and that would have to be something to either overwinter inside or just start seeds and replant every year.
And to Mike & ladylotus - I got that Australian red center lime from Logee's! It wasn't cheap though! Bought it last July (2017). They are currently backordered. I credit Laura and Vladimir who got them in 2016. The one thing I found with it despite its small size was that it did flower this winter and early spring and gave me a bunch of fruits so far, so at least they were selling fruiting plants. "Fruiting" in terms of (I expect) you not fertilizing them as much as your regular citrus and growing them in "the understory" (not full sun). Mine is sitting near the NNW side of the patio so it gets some sun in late morning and early afternoon and that's pretty much it.
Took another pic of it yesterday (and have had to battle the morning glories that want to engulf it...lol). It is actually in an 8" pot up on a stand -
These were some flowers on it back in June -
It's a pretty plant but the thorns are very long! It grows like a finger lime (which is one of its parents) but the fruit looks more like a lime/lemon except small in size with thin skin. I think my fruit will be done soon. Am curious if the skin will actually turn red.
Brian - Thanks! But I will always defer to your amazing trees. They are something to strive for! And in that case, I know patience is the key. :-D
Laura LaRosa (7b)
5 years agoJenny, I have milkweed growing. I planted it last year and it came back well this year - even bigger. I think it’s swamp milkweek. I also think it’s native. My daughter and I have been collecting all the caterpillars we find because when they get big, the birds eat them. We have two big butterfly habitats full of them - 20+. We have five in the chrysalis stage and released two monarchs today and one yesterday!
my daughter is keeping data in her homeschool science notebook - date released, sex, and of course, she names each butterfly before release. Today we released Bob and Isabel ;)
jenny_in_se_pa thanked Laura LaRosa (7b)jenny_in_se_pa
5 years agojenny_in_se_pa
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoHere ya go guys - just hatched a little over 30 minutes ago (1:15 pm ET) -
Have been taking some pics and videos of my ONE "newborn". lol
These are examples of some milkweed sprouts that came up recently after a few seeds from last year landed there and eventually germinated -
Will probably dig them up and put them in a catch pot with some other seedlings that had sprouted in a my other pots. lol
Laura - last year I was panicking because I had been treating the milkweed with insecticidal soap due to those damn orange oleander aphids so I had to carefully select sprouts that I knew I hadn't treated and then make sure I rinsed well regardless. This year I was so far able to nip them in the bud very early (I think having the excessive rain helped plus I make sure to really spray the milkweed down with the hose when I water), so I had enough "food" for my one.
Mike - with those morning glories, when they get to blooming I never get chance to get back to them to snap off the seedpods and by the time I do, of course it's too late and pods have split and spread seeds everywhere. Ah well... They are pretty but they grow fast! Also regarding that lime - I hope they have some in the nursery (seems they are out of stock online). They are neat plants!
jenny_in_se_pa
5 years agoWell - I went to look at my Eureka and check the coloration on the other side of the oldest lemon and off it fell into my hand! So I guess it's done. LOL
Not even gonna cut it open yet. Just have to stare at it for awhile. It's a culmination of a lot of blood, sweat, and tears (and $$$$$)! hee hee
jenny_in_se_pa
5 years agojenny_in_se_pa
5 years ago
Monyet
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoThis is all of my citrus collection, really too much but has to live with. Cara Cara naval fruits are actually larger than a grapefruit, these guys are just friggin big. I now have three trees started, all from that Walmart five dollar reject table
My wife hide-outjenny_in_se_pa thanked MonyetMonyet
5 years agoMy shortened L/N starting new growth. It was shortened to about 2 feet from 4+.For me it is a good start, hopefully it growth into a nice bushy tree by next summer.
jenny_in_se_pa thanked MonyetMonyet
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoI got to ask all members just one question: What is your ultimate requirement as what your tree's should look like and how many fruits should you expect when your tree produce at age. Mine should be about 5 feet tall and produces about 25 minimum. Is this wishful thinking?
Some members already has a few.jenny_in_se_pa thanked Monyet
lucky_cloud
5 years agoJust a couple because it's hard to get good pics out in my green jungle...
Santa Teresa today (3 gal rootmaker pot):
For comparison, the is the same tree when I got it back in April of this year, note the tag to get a sense of scale:
My first successful graft, NZL on an unknown (probably lemon) rootstock (that I have kept around just for practice and curiosity that I might someday find out what it is):
Next graft I did, owari to some kind of sour orange seedling from a fruit I bought at the international grocery, is pushing new growth just over 3 weeks old:
My 14-year-old Meyer got root pruned and put into a 5 gal rootmaker pot this summer, and responded with the most leaves it's ever had, and a new set of flowers and baby fruits:
jenny_in_se_pa thanked lucky_cloudjenny_in_se_pa
5 years agojenny_in_se_pa
5 years agolucky_cloud
5 years agoNew growth on almost 1-month-old Owari graft to ~5-month-old sour orange seedling
jenny_in_se_pa thanked lucky_cloud
Laura LaRosa (7b)