Kumquat Fukushu: to bare root & repot in 5.1.1 or not so late?
So yesterday morning, this gentleman selling flowers on a street corner truck deployed such a perfect ambush on me: he conspicuously displayed this kumquat fukushu tree along 2 other citrus trees...
After thinking about it for the rest of the day, on my way back home I took it with me:)
The mix is very very compact & heavy (5L pot).
If I completely remove this very heavy & compact clay mix and repot in a fresh porous mix so late in October, will the tree make it?
I have ready a good amount of 511-ish mix (bark, Seramis, perlite) and I can provide good light & warm environment.
What would you do? I feel a bit "lonely" in this decision and I would prefer not to kill the tree.
Thank you !
Michael (8b)
Label:
Other citrus tree, in +/- 30 L pot, sold for 120€:
Comments (16)
Vladimir (Zone 5b Massachusetts)
5 years agomichael_europe_zone8b thanked Vladimir (Zone 5b Massachusetts)Related Discussions
Gritty Mix and Re-potting Kumquat questions
Comments (77)I am a bit late on this. You can start fertilizing the tomatoes if they look doing good and not stressed after the transplant. I am sort of against any contraptions such as weed guard. It does not really help and in the longer run they are a pain. You should be fine with your raised beds on mulch. A weed here and there is OK. A while back someone told me this: you have two pile of dirt - one with weed and one without - which one you will select. The answer is the one with the weed since the other pile is so bad that even weed does not want to grow in that. Anyway, that is just an anecdote....See MoreQuestion on "transferring" plants into 5-1-1 mix
Comments (19)In my experience, a high % of the growers looking at your plant will be saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"; and if I had a nickel for every time I heard the advice given, I'd be a lot closer to a comfortable retirement. Do you ever hear, "If your car still starts, forget about changing the oil" or "Why bother having the brakes fixed if you haven't had an accident yet?" You know best what the original root mass is like. If it's badly congested, it will affect the plant as long as it remains that way, but it's not a decision I can make ..... whether to go for the whole repot now, or wait until early summer next year. I suppose I would weigh the likelihood that I could get the plant through the winter in decent shape and use that as the issue on which the decision balances. If you're confident you can, then what harm in waiting? If you're concerned, then maybe best to don your gloves and git 'er done. I don't think you need to spray the roots with neem oil .... I've never done it, so can't share how the plant might or might not react. Any idea what the active ingredient was in the insecticide you were given to use on the soil's inhabitants? Keep us posted? More questions I might help with? Observations? Al...See MorePotting up to 5-1-1 mix
Comments (7)OKgrowin, Thanks I hope they will not be bound by then Im hoping to put them out in a couple weeks or so, we have been hovering around the high 40's low 50's lately evening temps. I just put them in 6 inch pots this past weekend and they still had room to grow in the 4 inchers. I have a couple sacrificial plants out right now to see how they handle the outside since I have multiples of each type growing. So far after a week outside they are still growing and looking good. Thanks Rey.......See MoreWhy are my trees' roots rotting? Is it the 5-1-1 mix?
Comments (43)I've tried out the ballast method with my very first citrus and it worked very well last fall into winter then spring. Not sure if anyone remembers my Meyer's story but my Meyer came to me with a badly propagated root system from RBF and was always on the edge of declining health but it still managed to grow an impressive root system throughout winter with the ballast I provided in the pot. The tree only had 5 leaves provided with one LED grow light the whole winter season but still managed to grow nice roots in such poor health! I used a half quart plastic takeout container as my ballast. My poor tree is gone now but it serves as a wonderful reminder of what worked and didn't work (ie. ballast worked). Vlad it is possible the dust caused the bottom half to be too soaked for too long. I know you mentioned that Al's recipe uses the dust but I've looked into many different recipes and opinions on the 511 recipe on gardenweb to see how it fared with other growers. There was a very interesting thread where someone talked about a threshold for particle size and the maximum percentage allowed before becoming a real issue in container mixes. I've been trying to find if I saved or bookmarked it but haven't located it yet so I'll be looking through my phone photos for screenshots. I know for sure I saved it because I liked how he provided numbers for the quantities of each respective media and/or particle size. When I find it I'll make sure to post the photos or link. This year I've also noticed a huge difference in the way I water and how it effects the smaller particles like peat. Last year I had just started the gardening hobby so I didn't have any watering cans or wands. I just watered with a decades old leaking spray nozzle from the hose or using an empty water bottle as my watering device. I would drip water through the cap of the bottle very slowly and at the time with just 1 citrus tree, I had the patience for it. This spring I've added some blueberry plants, about 20 citrus seedlings from seed, and my 3 trees from Stan so I purchased a watering wand to make it quicker and easier. But! I stopped using it because I noticed that it provides such a large amount of water in such a short amount of time that it created a type of flash flood effect in my containers. So much water would pool and stay above the mix and pull alot of the peat down when it sank down leaving a layer of bare perlite on the surface. This was drastically different from my extremely slow water bottle method. My water bottle method acted more like drip irrigation and did very little to disturb the surface or stratify the container mix. I really feel that most people will have problems with peat or dust sized particles settling to the bottom of the container if your collection is large enough to require a watering wand or can. I think I'll be going back to poking holes into the caps of empty water bottles and letting that drip irrigate my citrus lol...See More
sunshine (zone 6a, Ontario,Canada)
5 years agomichael_europe_zone8b thanked sunshine (zone 6a, Ontario,Canada)michael_europe_zone8b
5 years agoThank you all for looking into my "case".
Denise, personally, I don't mind about leaving it as it is until Spring.
However I'm really concerned about that heavy & compact mix the tree is in right now.
Watering is really slow, water takes ages to come out of the pot (has 8 holes).
Vladimir, good idea, to soak the tree 30 min before doing the work, I sure hope I will manage to remove the old mix and not too many roots.
Mike, I have never asked that question, it could be...For other trees, I could see when I repotted that the trees have been up-potted, having a very gray & clay like mix at the core, extremely compacted and the outside 2-3 inches of a darker & more loose mix.
Steve, do you mean you re-potted your trees = removed all the old mix (or a major part of it), replaced with a new mix & bigger pot? How are your trees now ?
I also feel I should remove all the fruits if the repotting will take place...
Citrus is such a delicate matter...
Michael (8b)
This is the tree & the mix, right now:
close-up (5L pot):
Light & warmth I can provide, I have this setup in place since yesterday (18°C - 23°C)
Vladimir (Zone 5b Massachusetts)
5 years agomichael_europe_zone8b thanked Vladimir (Zone 5b Massachusetts)sunshine (zone 6a, Ontario,Canada)
5 years agomichael_europe_zone8b
5 years agoSo I went and fully bare-rooted and re-potted my new Fukushu this Saturday.
The event took place immediately after I tried to make some holes in the mix to help with the water flowing and observed that the mix is so compacted that the wood stick could not pass through the mix. How can I water this tree properly with such a dense medium?
Denise, I'm in Belgium, and a lot of the citrus trees available on the markets are mainly from Italy.
Vladimir, I soaked the root ball for more than 1 hour and it was still very very hard to make the clay go away...it help a lot to loosen the outside layer of mix while the middle part remained hard as rock.
So I removed all the fruits, the mix was ready (already at room temperatures), prepared the new pot (from 5L to 11L). The rest is in the pictures:
to be continued...michael_europe_zone8b
5 years ago
under led lights (13h/day) with new friends:)
No leaf drop after 48 hours...fingers crossed!sunshine (zone 6a, Ontario,Canada)
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agomichael_europe_zone8b thanked sunshine (zone 6a, Ontario,Canada)
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