Everything You Need To Know About Pruning, Fertilizing & Caring For Citrus Trees

Hey guys, Bridgette here and I am in the garden and we're gonna be talking about citrus. How do you prune it? When do you prune it? Do you spray it? And if you do, how do you spray it? How do you fertilize it? Everything you need to know about citrus because we're in San Diego. We're in the land of citrus and it is a beautiful place to grow oranges, lemons, limes, all the citruses. But I wanna arm you with as much information as possible and to help make that happen, I have a special guest, Craig here, who knows a lot about fruit trees. So before we get into that, make sure you hit the like and subscribe button so you're notified anytime we put out a video and we can help you have the best orchard possible. So, okay, Craig, you know me because you have helped me get my garden up and going, my orchard specifically. When we met, it was like really bad shape. Now it's beautiful. Let's talk about the steps that you use to help revive my orchard. Specifically, the questions that people have is, okay, when do we prune our citrus? And disclaimer for this video, we're really focusing on citrus. I think I've said it like 12 times already, but just so you know, citrus is what we're talking about. When do you prune it in Southern California or zone nine and 10? Well, that's a little trickier question than it is with dormant trees. Dormant trees tell you when they're ready to be pruned because they dropped their leaves and they say, we're ready. Okay. Citrus trees don't do that, they're evergreens. And it really depends on the tree. It depends on how well it's grown. You mentioned how well the citrus grow in Southern California. Southern California was built on citrus. You could argue the entire state of California was built on citrus and nuts. And with our citrus trees, it really depends on how they're growing, how vigorously they're growing. We're never going to hard prune a citrus tree. Okay. They don't need that, they don't want that. What does hard prune mean? So hard pruning is when we remove a lot of wood. Okay, not doing that. If you think about roses, the way we prune roses down to just sticks, that's a hard prune. We kind of do the same kind of pruning technique with deciduous trees. In this case, we're never gonna do that. And the primary reason is that the reason that citrus and avocados, which we can kind of lump together, grow bushy and shaggy is to actually protect the trunk from the sun. So we can't open big holes into our citrus trees because we will just end up sunburning the trunk. So you would not want a vase shape for citrus because you don't want sun in there because it's gonna burn. We don't want too much. Too much, yeah. We want some, we want dappled sunlight. So when we do prune a citrus tree, that's what we're pruning for. We're essentially pruning to open the tree up because the way that citrus trees grow is they grow a big long branch from the center. They get fruit on the end and it bends that tree over. And then it happens again and then it happens again. And what you end up with is layers of branches laying on top of each other and it gets very dense. What happens then is the whole interior of your tree stops growing. It all turns brown and all you have is the green shell. Now we do want that bushy shape. We want it nice and round and kind of fat looking, but we wanna make sure that it's open enough that we can kind of see through the tree. So if you can't see anything on the other side of the tree, you have too much. So what we're going to end up doing, and you can kind of see how, as I was talking, at one point it was straight up and now it's starting to curve over because it's got a little weight to it. Yeah, yeah, totally, that's exact example. We're gonna get new branches that are gonna continue to do that. And eventually, in about a year, this tree is gonna be like a little bush. Okay. What's gonna happen very quickly after that is it's gonna get very dense. So we're just gonna go in, and there is no real timetable to say that there isn't, you don't have to prune your citrus every year. Okay. You prune it when it needs to be pruned, but there is a window. When is the ideal time? The best time to prune a citrus tree is after the fruit has come off at the end of winter, but before it starts to flower. Okay, and just so people know, in my orchard that's been very difficult because that window is so short, and we don't always pick all the fruit off. It's very easy to leave fruit on your tree almost year round. So key to that is making sure you harvest heavy. When the fruit's ready, take it all off so you have that window in between when it's finished fruiting and before it starts fruiting again. Yeah, it's a little tricky, and it's by far the thing that I stress the most when it comes to citrus trees is please remove the fruit when it's ready. We know it's a lot, but- Share it! Well, yeah, give it away, donate it. I work with several non-profits that have no shortage of a need of food. There's plenty of places where you can get that fresh produce to go, but what you're doing with the tree by leaving the fruit on the tree is you were stressing it out, and you were making it very hard for the tree to move on to its next stage. Okay. Trees go through hormonal stages just like people. Okay. So the hormones in the tree are dictated by the soil temperature and the amount of sunlight. So that's what tells the tree what to do. When it's fruiting, that's what it wants to do. It wants to set fruit, make fruit, hold the fruit because the tree's job is essentially to make seeds. Yep, yep. And create new seeds. So once it's there, it doesn't want to do anything else. But as we move from winter into spring, nature is telling this plant that it's time to flower. So it wants to drop that fruit. It doesn't want that fruit on the tree anymore. It wants to switch over into its flowering stage and then into its growth stage. So then it's best prepared to set more fruit the following season. So that's why it's important to remove that fruit. So this is a great example because it's already flowering, it's already fruiting. So if you have a tree like this in your backyard and you need to do some pruning, how would you approach this? With this tree, I don't think I would prune much outside of taking off some extra weight for shape. So this, we've got one branch that's just kind of dominating this side of the tree. And you can see there's some flowers and some stuff over here trying to happen, but it's not. And that's just a symptom of being in Southern California. If we lived in an area that had more dramatic seasonal shifts in weather, you wouldn't see this happening as much. But also citrus are kind of bred to be heavy producers and they've been bred that way on purpose. So we're always going to have an excess of fruit. Now, if we cut off a few flowers, it is not the end of the world. It will continue to make more flowers. What we don't want to do is get into a full-sized tree that's loaded with flowers, rubbing up against all the branches, trying to prune it and knocking all those flowers off and then greatly reducing our crop. So how would you prune this particular one? This branch is obviously heavy. It's falling over. We even have some baby fruit on here. Yeah, in this case, this tree is so small that we may not even prune it at all to start with. We actually want it to grow as much as possible. Now, if we do prune a little bit, we're going to stimulate growth. And I don't know if you can see, but we have a lot of new branches coming. Yeah, little babies. So that's a great sign. That means this tree is fully awake. So in this case, I will definitely prune this off down to that new little branch right there, just so that we kind of are starting to shape our tree. Because as you can see- Now, let me show people this. It's okay. We took off a little, we sat, what little one we're sacrificing is not the end of the world. This is, it's helping the whole health of the tree. I know it's really hard as a new gardener to prune off any flowers or fruit because you think you're being wasteful. This is going to help make the whole tree healthier and less likely to snap with fruit. Yeah, and also we are still at risk of having a frost. So it's very likely that if we do even have one frost, that these flowers are going to fall off and die anyway. Okay. We might not have a frost and these flowers might stick around. At the end of the day, the trees are so prolific. There's going to be so much on here. Yeah, there's even this little tiny tree will probably produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 fruit, usable fruit. And we might not even keep all of those because we have to run, we have to make sure that we don't risk snapping these brand new branches with a heavy piece of fruit at the end because they will produce a lot of weight and actually tear the branches. So at this stage, we're not really concerned with production. We're still concerned with this tree spending most of its energy sending out roots. So even if we were to take all the fruit off of this tree purposefully, we would actually be helping the tree in a different way. Okay, so we prune this one because it was obviously pulling down on the bottom. What else on this tree would you prune? The other thing that I like to make sure isn't happening is that we don't have anything on the ground. Which I can definitely see some little guys down here that like, I don't know, should we take those off? We call them bug ladders when they're touching the ground. So when this branch sets fruit, it's literally going to pull this branch all the way down to the ground. And then ants are just going to make a highway. Correct. Now, the one thing I do want to notice down here is some of these branches here. Now, these branches look very different in one particular way. One, they are covered in spikes and the leaves just don't look the same as some of these newer branches up here, which tells me that this is root stock. So we need to get rid of that as much as we can. We'll just take a look here. You can see that these branches look different in their shape. They kind of look like stretched out taffy and how different the leaves look in these little triplet formations as opposed to the way these leaves grow here. So we're taking those off because it's root stock. Yeah, we don't want this. This will produce a fruit that does not taste good. Okay. So, and for people who don't know, for people who don't know, root... You got a cough? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. No, I'm good. Although I really hope I haven't had a bat in the cage this whole time. All right, for those of you who don't know, root stock is a term that refers to the bottom half of a grafted tree. So trees, a lot of times fruit trees are grafted, meaning that the top tree is actually different than the bottom tree and they stick them together and get them to grow. The root stock is typically really disease resistant and very vigorous, but not really good fruit. So we don't want that part of the tree to be growing a lot because it's going to produce yucky fruit, take energy from the rest of the tree. So as a general rule of thumb with all fruit trees, you want to keep root stock growth down really to non-existent besides underneath the ground. Okay, what about the bug ladder? Are we going to take this off because it could be a bug ladder? This is where we have to make a decision. So not, there's never, there are some cut and dry rules when it comes to pruning, but there's a lot of, it's your call kind of moments. And this is where it's your call. And for me with a small tree like this, I would rather this have as many leaves as possible at this point so that it can photosynthesize and create more energy. If we start taking off too many of the leaves, we're taking off all of its solar panels. So in this case, it's not quite touching the ground yet, but we're going to keep an eye on it. Anything that ends up touching the ground, we're going to go ahead and remove when we need to, but we want to give this tree as much of a chance as possible to actually create energy because that's only going to help the tree. Quick checklist of like, what's a prune with citrus. So bug ladders, anything touching the ground, rootstock, obviously anything dead and diseased. Deadwood for sure. Anything else on that little checklist that you would look for? We're pruning for shape. Okay. So we are pruning for the bush, the round bushy shape that you see all citrus in. So we don't want branches that are lateral growth that's sticking just straight out in the tree. It's not pleasing to the eye. It's also not, probably not a strong branch. One thing you are going to see as we get into spring is something that we call, that it can be either called water sprouts, or sometimes people call them suckers. But what they are is really rapid growth that's usually growing straight up into the sky. It's just reaching for the stars. Our orchard has a lot of them right now. And it happens every year, but what happens is that growth happens so fast that the branches start to stretch out and they lose their round shape and they start to look like somebody stretched out a piece of taffy. Okay, that's a good tip. That's weak wood. So that wood is not going to be strong enough to hold fruit. So we need to remove that. Also, if we let the tree keep getting taller, it's going to keep sending more sprouts trying to find more sun. So that's when you end up with a 30 foot orange tree that you can only pick the bottom four feet of. So we want to keep that in mind long-term. The real trick to pruning is thinking way ahead. We're pruning for next year. We're pruning for five years down the road. So something I want to point out is like, okay, this obviously has big old fruit, right? And this guy, this over here has baby little fruit. There's a reason why, right? That's shade oriented. Correct, correct. This tree is just reaching for the sun. So that's why this shape is like this. So for viewers at home, when you're doing your pruning and you're wondering why something's growing, stop and look at the structures around you and ask yourself, especially in Southern California, if you're in an urban space, is this tree exposed to some shade and how is that affecting it? So we talked about pruning. Now let's talk about spraying. Okay, do you spray citrus trees? No, you don't. Okay, so we don't use the horticultural oil or the sulfur that we talked about with our deciduous trees. Correct. Do you do anything or what can a viewer do to ensure healthy plants? Is washing your trees a good idea? 100%. Okay. If you come out and, you know, obviously don't knock off all your flowers, but coming out on a regular basis, I would say at least every month, if not every two weeks, I do mine every week. Okay. Where I just come out with a sharp jet of water and just blast my tree. I will say that like we have a silly little attachment that I love, it's called like a bug jet or something. Bug blaster. And it is really nice because it's a really hard jet of water. If you come out with your hose and you're just like, you know, okay, are you really knocking stuff off? You're trying to clean it. That's what you're trying to do. So wash your trees with just a strong jet of water once a month, particularly in a hot season where we're not getting any rain at all. And then how do you fertilize them? Fertilizing is quite easy. Again, we want to talk more about feeding the soil. So regular applications of compost and keeping a good layer of bark are key. Mulch, mulch, mulch, mulch. Lots of mulch, lots of compost. The more compost we have, the better off the soil is going to be. The soil is actually what's breaking down the nutrients for the tree into a level that the trees can then uptake through the roots. And the mulch you never want pushed all the way up against, you know, the trunk of the tree that can cause, you know, basically rotting and things like that. So you do this kind of donut shape here, add your compost in. So you'd add your compost in right on top, right? We're just going to mix this in. Now, in this case, we want to keep it off the trunk, but you want to get it over the roots, which is essentially the drip line of the tree. You want to try and get your compost out to as far out around the edge of your tree as you can. And then just go ahead and cover it up back up with your mulch. With your mulch. If you don't know what the drip line of the tree is, it's basically the area where your branches reach on the outside. That is all the drip line area. That's where you're going to want to put your compost. And for clarity, we're not talking about this drip line, which is your irrigation. So we put down the compost. We put the mulch back on top. Now, what about actual fertilizer, fertilizer, granule fertilizer? So fertilizer is actually good for citrus trees because they're such vigorous growers. What I like to do with my fertilizer is I like to read the back and see how much it tells me to fertilize and how often. So the fertilizer that we were using, the grow power that we like to use was calling for every three months, one cup for the size of tree that we were talking about. So what I will do is I will take that entire amount. So one cup times four, it's four cups. So we're going to take those four cups and we're going to divide it by 12. And we're going to apply that amount of fertilizer every month to the citrus tree. So we're creating more of a drip effect of fertilizer instead of a large dose. When we put large doses of fertilizer down, down the road as that large dose starts to break down, you're going to create an explosion of growth, which oftentimes results in just a lot of pruning. It needs to be done. And for those of you who got our calendar, you can put that in your notes section. Hey, add fertilizer on fruit trees every single month. Just a little tip. So I like to coordinate my fertilizing days with the days that I'm washing my tree. So that way we are not killing two birds with one stone. We put the fertilizer down, we wash the tree. We're at the same time watering that fertilizer in gently. Perfect. Not spraying the fertilizer with the hose, but allowing it to drip down. So a little like quick cliff notes version is if you got citrus trees in Southern California, you're going to prune them lightly when that pruning is needed. Watch the whole video for all those details. But pruning is important. Compost is important. And then fertilizing every month and washing your trees off is very important. And I know that those were things that made all the difference in my orchard. And now we have tons and tons of fruit thanks to you and those great tips.