Why I Don’t Plant Citrus in the Ground 😲 (In Florida)

Take a look at this. Beautiful grapefruit. 20 years ago, growing this in Florida was so easy. You throw any citrus tree in the dirt and ignore it, leave it alone, and boom, you have grapefruit, you have lemons, all sorts of citrus grown in your backyard with little to no effort. Today, that's a different story. If you're growing any citrus in your backyard now, you deserve a trophy. This is the reason why we are switching from putting them in the ground like this to growing them in pots. Let's talk about it. I'm going to save you a lot of money and heartbreak right now. There's a specific reason why I personally stopped putting citrus trees in the ground. If you are struggling to keep your trees alive or wondering why you haven't harvested a single citrus yet, the hard truth is the ground has become a much harder place to grow and pots are the solution that saved my citrus. Today, I am breaking down exactly why your ground is so difficult now and showing you the container strategy I use to keep my citrus alive in Florida. If you were in Florida in the 80s or in the 90s, like me, you remember truckload of oranges on a roadside stand selling 50-pound bags for pocket change. Every backyard had a tree. Mines had orange and lemons. We didn't do any work for it. It basically was out there doing its own thing and suddenly, everything changed. Our lemons started to change color, they weren't producing fruit, and over time, we started to lose our citrus trees. Not only that, we lost the farmers. Fighting this new disease became so expensive that thousands of family farms went bankrupt. That is why when you go to the grocery store, your orange juice costs 10 bucks. When you lose half the farmers in the state, the supply disappears and the price, you guessed it, skyrockets. My whole goal of gardening is to slow down or to reduce the amount of money I'm spending at the grocery store. And one of the top things my babies like is lemon juice and orange juice. I personally love grapefruit juice. I cannot say I live in Florida and struggling to grow citrus. We're a citrus state. Come on, man. Before we get to the solution, we have to figure out what actually happened to your tree. I get tons of questions in the comments. I get pictures. Why is my tree doing this and how to fix it? So most of the time is one of three things. Problem number one, HLB, citrus greening. A tiny bug showed up, the Asian citrus psyllid, carrying a bacteria that blocks the tree's nutrient flow. This isn't just a sick tree. This is a tree that is being strangled. That bacteria enters the veins of the tree and clogs them up. It prevents sugars from moving downwards. So while the top looks yellow, the roots are actually starving to death. How do you know if you actually have it? So do the mirror test. So look at the yellow leaf. If the yellow pattern is the same on the left side and it is on the right side of the vein, that is just a nutrient deficiency. This tree was repotted and I didn't add any type of nutrients to it. So I know what the problem is with this tree. But if the yellow is blotchy, random, and asymmetrical, that is greening. No amount of fertilizer in the soil will fix that leaf. Problem number two, the invisible killer. Pay close attention to this one. If your tree is in the ground and it is just stopped, it's not growing, it's stunt, it looks weak, that's likely nematodes. These are microscopic worms in your sandy soil that eats at the roots. My husband once pulled up a citrus from my garden and the roots was nothing. It was in the ground for three years and not giving us fruit. When he pulled it up from the ground, those roots, they were gone. That's the best way I can say. It was nothing there. This one didn't even have to go deep. He basically put the shovel on the ground. Within two seconds, he was able to pull up the roots. Nematodes were eating at those roots. Problem number three, the freeloader. You see these beautiful leaves here? These are my freeloaders. They are lush. They give you dark green leaves and it's going to grow very tall, but they haven't given you a single fruit. First, you want to check the age. If it's under three years, it's a baby, that's normal. Over five years, that's usually too much nitrogen fertilizer which grows nothing but leaves. Or like this one here, it's in the corner. I know I need to pull it up. I just don't have the time and it's not getting enough sun. That is an easy fix. And now, if you have learned something so far to help this channel to continue to see videos like this, please subscribe, like, and share this video with someone else who may be struggling and need these tips. All right, so let's get to the truth out there. How do the pros stop the bugs? How are they still producing citrus in Florida? My family and I recently visited a farm in Embargo, Florida and it was the first farm is battling this disease, this bug straight on. They have a full screened-in area with thousands of citrus trees inside. It was so incredible to see how they built these massive screen houses which are called cups to physically stop the bugs from landing on a tree. Inside, it felt like we were back in the 1990s again. These trees were lush trees, perfect fruit. The smallest trees had about 10 to 15 large grapefruits on them, which shows that it is still possible to grow citrus in Florida. And it was in ground. But on the outside of the screens, that was the crazy part. I saw 10-year-old trees that looked like they were about two years old. The greening has stunned them so badly that they were frozen in time. What they built truly worked. But let's be real, we're backyard gardeners. There's no way I can build that screen in the backyard. I would love to have a massive greenhouse like that. But do I give up? No, I cheat the system. So I wanna be clear. I'm not saying you can't grow citrus in ground. There are plenty of gardeners fighting a good fight and keeping their in-ground trees alive. And if that's you, I salute you. But here's the real reality. I had to accept planting in the ground right now is hard mode. In the ground, you are managing a lot of variables. The sand, you have to constantly amend it and keep the moisture and nutrients from washing away. You have the issues of pests. You have those microscopic nematodes attacking the roots. And once it's planted, it's stuck there. That is why I switched the pots. It's not because I hate the ground. I have just seen so much more success and it just made my life much easier when I have them in pots like this. By lifting the tree out the ground, I instantly eliminate nematodes. I keep the nutrients right in the roots. And most importantly, I get a lot more control. Now, you can use any big pot. For citrus, you like to go for 20 to 25 gallon pots. But these Vigo planters are so much easier for me. Not because they look nice, because they do. Because when I see a swarm of bugs or freeze is coming, I just unlock the wheels and roll them right into my screen, the line behind me. I know you're gonna say you can use a regular pot with rolling caddies. Absolutely, you absolutely can. If you already have them in big pots, make sure you do that. That solves the movement problem. I just make sure any of my new citrus trees or any of the ones I'm moving from the in-ground, I already have them in these rolling beds because the setup solve more than just moving them. They solve the watering problem. Because this isn't just a bucket on wheels. If you look inside, they have a built-in reservoir at the bottom with these wicking cells. Here's why that matters. Citrus is very dramatic. It hates being over watered. It also hates drying out. Basically, I just fill that reservoir and the soil wicks up exactly the moisture it needs from the bottom. And it takes the guessing work out of the watering and keeps the trees happy producing fruit. And if you don't have a lanai, no problem. When you have it in pots, the tree is still contained and you can easily just use a mesh tree cover for it. It's like a personal mosquito net for your trees. So real quick, Vigo is doing a huge Black Friday sale right now and Cyber Monday deal. You can get 5% off on top of the deals with my code ROOTEDINJAYS5. I'll put the link right at the top of the description so you can grab these beds while they are on sale. Now, having the pots is only step one. Step two is how you feed it. Remember we talked about the greening clogging the veins? If you put fertilizer in the soil, a sick tree can't pull it up fast enough because the roots are starving. So here's the secret, foliar feeding. I spray micronutrients like magnesium, manganese, and zinc directly onto the leaves. Think of it like a IV drip at the hospital. We are bypassing the stomach and putting medicine straight into the bloodstream. If you're buying a new tree, the University of Florida has released new tolerant varieties like the sugar bale. But listen closely, tolerant does not mean immune. These trees will still get the virus. They just survive longer. So you still need to make sure you have a plan and not just relying on the fact that it says tolerant. One of the things I want to make sure I call out when you are buying trees from the big box stores, you want to read the tag. By Florida law, every citrus tree is treated with a systematic pesticide before it's sold. That tag has a date. That is your timer. When those chemicals wear off in a few months or a year, you are basically on your own. Now, for my organic gardeners like me, you don't have a choice at the store. They have to treat it to sell it. Once that expiration takes place, if you don't want chemicals, your best defense is a camouflage. There's a product called kaolin clay. It's a natural white product. You spray over the tree. It dyes the tree white like a ghost. The bugs hunt for green. So when they see white, they fly right past it. The catch is we're in Florida. So the rain most likely will wash it away. So you just got to make sure you reapply that spray. But that is our best defense to go the organic route to hide your trees. So honestly, looking at these screens and our dying trees on the outside, it makes you really wonder, did we react too late? Could we have saved the backyard orange if we acted sooner? I really want to know what you think. Please drop it in the comments below. If you are that Floridian garden that I need to send a trophy to that are growing citrus in the ground successfully year after year, please put it in the comments below. What is your trick? What's working for you? Because we learn from each other. I'm be the first to say, I am still learning and still finding ways to make sure I completely transform my garden. And the only way I do so is not only just research, but I learn from other successful gardeners out there too. And look, I know citrus is complicated now. If you still have questions on your trees, even if it's not citrus trees or just fruit trees altogether, and I didn't mention it today, don't panic. Check out my interactive guide on rutiandjays.com. Click on save my plants and it walks you through the fixes step by step so you don't have to guess. And you can always just leave a comment on the video below and we'll work through it together. So the reality is harsh. The effortless backyard tree is gone, but getting citrus in your backyard is still possible. You'll still be able to taste the sunshine, but you just have to stop gardening like it's 1990s. Either you get the rolling bed, you put them in pots, you feed it correctly, protect your harvest. You just gotta do a little bit more extra steps to ensure harvest. If you learned something new today, don't forget to like and subscribe. Leave a comment below to help support this video. Until next time, thanks for watching. Bye. ♪♪♪