All you need to grow fabulous backyard citrus is fertile soil, the right varieties and climate, plus regular watering...
In other words, distrust any instructions that begin 'All you need to do...'. Citrus are possibly the fussiest fruit to grow, and even more pernickety if you want to get a crop, much less harvest good-looking fruit.
It is minus-7 degrees outside as I write this, and while my feet are warm in ugh boots and the rest of me protected by thermals, not to mention being in a warm and sunny study, our citrus trees have been out there in the cold all night, and still have icy grass around them. But they are not just surviving, but thriving.
According to Canberra gardeners' wisdom 50 or so years ago, when I first planted citrus in this region, the Canberra climate wasn't suitable for citrus. Canberra has frosts. Big, tree-covering frosts. Citrus would not survive a frosty climate...
But I'd just moved from an area in Queensland that had frosts most winter days - and the citrus survived. I also kept meeting Canberra gardeners who'd ignored the conventional advice and had a lemon tree in the backyard, a cumquat in a pot, or an orange tree by a sunny wall - and good fruit, too.
Okay, this is not a region to grow citrus commercially. But backyard citrus grow well here - especially as the Canberra climate is now warmer by several degrees than it was 50 years ago. Add umpteen kilometres of bitumen roads, concrete footpaths, car parts and tall concrete-based buildings and houses that are heated in winter, and Canberra heated itself - and it's garden areas - considerably, though it may not seem like it when you need to add a beanie, scarf, and three pairs of socks before you head out to remove the ice from the windscreen every morning.
Growing citrus in Canberra needs regular garden work, but it's worth it. As long as the citrus are in a sunny and sheltered spot, our frosts also soften and sweeten citrus fruit. Tahitian limes stay green even when ripe in the tropics. Here they turn yellow after the frost, are softer, juicer, sweeter, and with a more pronounced flavour.
Oranges may not grow as large but they too will be sweeter, softer and more flavourful for the frost. Lemons will become confused by sunny days and cold temperatures and might fruit all year round, as long as you pick them regularly.
Usually these columns are about plants that forgive you if you neglect them. This is not the case with citrus but, my word, having lemons and limes to pick whenever you fancy, or frost-sweet oranges to munch on, is worth it. So what cosseting do Canberra citrus need?
1. Plant the most cold-tolerant varieties. If you are buying locally, don't worry - any good garden centre will be selling the kind of citrus that will do well here. Actually, I've yet to find a citrus that won't grow here, apart from blood oranges and red-fleshed grapefruit, that need longer summers than we can give them.
2. Water. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a citrus tree whose roots dry out will soon be a dead citrus, or possibly one where the roots survive and grow into inedible rootstock, and the delicious grafted variety on top vanishes. If the leaves begin to curl or the soil is dry - water. Citrus are shallow rooted, so even older trees won't have deep enough roots to survive droughts - though they'll live longer than younger trees.
3. Mulch all through spring, summer and autumn, to help keep moisture in and soften the soil so it retains moisture. But don't mulch in winter - mulch attracts frost - and don't ever mulch right up to the trunk, or the moisture and decomposition will attract wood rots.
4. Feed. I have rarely seen a home-grown citrus that has been well fed. In fact, I only know one such tree and it doesn't belong to me. I need to feed my trees this spring with mulch, hen manure and compost, and when I run out of those, with mulch and citrus food scattered on top, followed by a solid watering so the fertiliser doesn't burn those shallow roots.
5. Watch out for pests. Pick all fallen citrus at once - rotting fruit attracts fruit fly and stink bugs. If you get little scaly things on the leaves, you have the sap sucker imaginatively known as "scale". Spray the leaves with a commercial oil spray when the temperature is below 24 degrees, or you may burn the leaves. If ants bring woolly aphids - they look like tiny sponges on the leaves - use tree banding grease on the trunk and branches to stop the ants bringing them up the tree to farm and feed on the sweet sap the woolly aphids absorb from the tree. An oil spray may kill them but a scrub with an old toothbrush is more ruthless, and cheaper.
6. Pick often, as they ripen. Even though modern citrus have been bred to harvest in a few weeks, some will be ready weeks or even a month or two earlier than the others. The more you pick, the longer the picking season seems to be - and the fatter the fruit you pick later will become.
7. Choose a sunny, protected spot, not one where the wind will whistle unhindered around the branches. The corner of the backyard or by a sunny wall or fence is perfect. The middle of a bare lawn or paddock is not.
This is the time to feel smug about home-grown citrus. Our Valencia oranges are ripening - just a few so far - as are the earliest tiny mandarins and Eureka lemons. The Meyer lemons are coming along well; the navel oranges that crop in a few months are showing an excellent if still small and green crop, as are the Seville oranges for marmalade. For some reason the grapefruit didn't set much fruit, which is fine by me, as we rarely eat grapefruit. The cumquats are a dud this year, but the Tahitian and Malabar limes are a delight.
We are in for a wonderful winter of guzzling and giving, with fresh fruit, boomerang marmalade (we provide the fruit and usually a jar or two comes back to us - all we need) and lots of flourless, almond-rich orange or lemon cakes, lemon tarts, lime "butter" and all the other delights of a garden rich in frost-sweet citrus.
This week I am:
- Ordering the seeds for summer and spring planting, and trying to be realistic about how much I will actually weed and water. In other words, trying to buy about one firth of the seeds I am tempted to try.
- Finding a shop that actually wants to buy our chokos - and will even pick them, just when every friend begins the conversation with 'By the way, we don't need any more chokos yet'. The blasted vine is still setting fruit, despite the frosts.
- Staring amazed at the cherry tomatoes outside my study window - the bushes are still unfazed by winter temperatures, and still giving a few blooms, though only four or five ripe fruit a week.
- Cautiously triumphant about the coffee bushes I covered in bubble wrap. So far they have survived, and are even putting out new shoots in their bubble wrap 'green house'.
- Cheering the date tree - it first gave dates at the height of the drought in 2019, and is blooming again. Now we know that there'll be a crop we might even discover when to pick dates in this climate. Dates need male and female trees to fruit, but as far as I know only one of our date trees - obviously female - has bloomed so far. The sex like of plants can be as complex and unexpected as that of humans.
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