If you have citrus trees in your garden, you will be enjoying the fruit right now.  If not, then winter is a great time, in the warmer regions, to plant citrus trees and with many dwarf varieties, your garden size no longer matters.  They can be successfully grown in a pot, with more regular watering and feeding.

Citrus and herbs are an essential in every home garden and each can be grown easily in all zones except those that experience heavy frosts.  If space is an issue, look out for multi grafted fruit tree varieties and consider dwarf varieties for growing in pots.  Choose a plant with no more than 3 different fruit varieties to avoid the risk of poor performance and the stronger stock taking over.  Personally, I have a multi grafted Tahitian Lime and a Kaffir Lime which I think is a great addition to my garden.  The Kaffir Lime provides the leaves that I add to my Thai dishes and the Tahitian limes are so juicy providing the necessary ingredient for so many recipes.

espalier fruit trees

 

Espalier is another way of incorporating fruit trees into a small courtyard and can be incredible decorative becoming the central feature to your design.  The art of espalier is selective pruning along with some time training the plant to a desired shape.  With the correct structure or trellis the process is simple but does require some regular time allocation to ensure you get the desired structure.

 

 

MAINTENANCE.

In some zones, the warmer weather comes around very quickly triggering another flowering of fruit for next year.

  • Take the time over the next couple of months to give your citrus a trim, removing any branches that have been affected by the gall wasp.
  • Keep your plant open, allowing light and airflow to access the middle of the plant structure, improving your harvest.
  • Ensure you pick up any fallen fruit to ensure you reduce fruit fly.
  • Applying a good organic fertilizer specific for citrus along with a good helping of mulch will set your fruit trees up for another six months (if they are in the ground).
  • Mulch well to reduce competing weeds and moisture loss.  Using an alkaline product like Organic Sugar Cane Mulch will ensure your trees thrive.
  • Supplemental watering will be required during dry periods to ensure your fruit is juicy.