Hi, Scott, et al, In a different forum/thread, I posted the same question: i.e. do 4 saplings growing close form a single trunk of a solid single core or multiple cores, and 'Brandon6b' replied that, if this did happen, the core/tree-formed may rot. I hope this isn't the case: my reply..... That is very disappointing: that the rot will occur and sometimes will be the cause of premature tree death. In nature, I've seen enormous threes that seem to survive this natural arrangement, or maybe I'm not interpreting the observation correctly: there are 4+ large trunks that are growing so closely that, for the first few feet, the run in parallel contact with one another; maybe they are not 4 separate trees (of the same species and size) but 4 separate suckers coming from the same root system. Maybe a way out of this issue is to get this to happen early on: to arrange the 4 saplings (that are of 1" diameters or so) only 2" apart from each other; to me, it would seem that this would have to cause a single solid tree trunk of the 4. I hope I can figure this out soon, because the saplings are on their way in the mail and are bare root. Thanks, Steve

Pip, didn't see your post, sorry. But, know that it's not a "3-in-1" grafted tree. What he has are three rooted cuttings stuck into one pot. Three completely separate trees growing in one pot, one of which is very vigorous and will crowd out the other two and eventually kill them (so, I guess it will probably end up with your recommendation, if punky tries to continue to grow 3 trees in one pot). No need to kill anything. Punky really should remove two of the cuttings and re-pot them in their own pots. And, what Kippy said. It really is a very perfect example of "you get what you pay for". These are cuttings of more ornamental types of citrus trees, which is fine if that's what you want - a pretty plant that is rather high-maintenance inside, and produces pretty, but either inedible or marginal fruits. And, punky, again, Kippy has given you some good advice - don't shoot the messengers you asked us about these cultivars we've told you what they are, where to go to find out more about them, and what we, as experienced citrus growers would do. It is entirely up to you as to what you wish to do with your 3 cuttings. Wishing you well, whatever it is you decide. Patty S.

jenny, they were using the C-35 before January because my Smith Red is on it and purchased it as a 2 year old tree. People like me are just starting to notice the changes. I don't understand why FWG kept the name of their rootstock from the past a big secret. I asked over a year ago about it and was told I would have to speak to their propagator. I can understand if they developed something new and it was going through some sort of study. Harris Citrus Nursery has been quite open about what they use.

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