When it comes to gardening, it seems to be a hit and miss for me. I seem to have a grey thumb – in between green and black. I admit I don’t know much about planting, nor do I know what to plant in the first place! My backyard is one giant earth experiment for me.
To make it easier for myself, the selection of plants have been simple. Only perennials and hardy plants, like Calla Lilies, Lily of the Nile, Jasmine, and Hydrangea. Nothing fancy like roses or orchids.
However, last year around Summer 2009, I decided to be ambitious and tried planting a small orange tree. I bought one from OSH’s nursery at a bargain price of $8.99 for $24.99! How hard could it be? Plant and grow, right?
Wrong.
Fast forward to April 2010, the tree (pictured here) had a branch that grew almost 10′ tall. It didn’t seem right, so I asked the folks at UCCE Master Gardeners, and here’s their reply:
Hi Rudy,
Thank you for contacting the UCCE Master Gardeners of Orange County about your orange tree. Also, thank you for sending the picture. The picture show us what your problem is and how to answer you.
Orange trees are grafted. A root stock is selected which is resistant to the diseases in the soil then the desired orange is grafted on the root stock. One of the type of citrus trees used for root stock has huge thorns, your tree has huge thorns. At the place on your tree where the graft should have been, there is a bend. This indicates that the graft died and the root system sent up a sucker which will not produce the type of orange that you want.
While you could cut off the sucker and regraft the tree, it would be easier and faster to dig up your tree and plant a new one. When buying a new orange tree, be sure and take a look at the graft area. It should be growing straight and you should be able to see a ridge or callor at the point of the graft.
Sorry you lost a year of growing time. When you plant your new tree be sure and protect the graft area from the sun for the first year. Your nursery should sell plastic sun barriers that go around the base of the tree.
Barry – Master Gardener
Looks like I under-estimated the details in planting an orange tree! I have to dig it up and throw away a live plant1. So sad.
At this point, I haven’t decided to plant another orange tree. But if I am, at least I have Barry’s instructions on how inspect and care for the new plant. Maybe my thumb will turn green then.
- The plant won’t bear fruit 🙁 [↩]
Building IT
Jot It Down
hey Rudy,
Bummer on the orange tree. I’m a bit surprised you got such a nice and informative response (and I learned from it – thanks).
Anyway, for gardening I generally try to stick to tomatoes… nothing like a garden-ripened tomato!
As to trees, two years ago my wife and kids planted a lemon seed and an apple seed. We now have a pair of four foot trees in pots (they started in paper cups). We’ll see what happens. Maybe one day we’ll get a lemon or an apple, and probably pretty soon they’ll both need bigger pots.
Anyway, I hope your thumb turns green too! 🙂
Steve
Hey Steve,
Believe it or not, they let me exchange the orange tree. Got a new one and I just planted it. Will write a new blog about it soon. 🙂
Oh, my wife insisted I plant tomatoes too. I just don’t want to plant the stuff and have the wildlife take it away (rats, rabbits, etc).
Hey Rudy,
Good to hear that you could exchange the tree! Too bad you lost that growing year though.
My “wildlife problem” is gophers, which makes growing things a serious challenge.
Good luck on the new tree! 😀
Steve
[…] discovering my orange tree would not grow, I went to get a new one to replace it. Last Sunday, I just planted a Washington Navel Orange […]
I had no idea there was so much required to grow an orange tree either… I hope the grapes we just planted are doing ok 😀 I just like to set it and forget it for the most part. My plants usually end up being pretty tough… We have this one rose where for a short period of time, it went thorn crazy and put about (guesstimating) 10 times the density of thorns per square inch than I’ve ever seen before.
My yard is an experiment too… Just bought a compost bin today! Hopefully it wont stink. Now I can stop giving away my fertilizer to people who I (my taxes) pay to take it away… Then they later sell the land I paid them to fill with my good trash! I just got to lay down some more rat poison (my neighborhood started getting rats a couple years ago =T supposedly due to land clearing for construction and building demolition (for planned construction) destroying their previous habitat. Rats keep going under my shed… I keep buying bags of cement and poison… but I realllly don’t like using poison… but they just dig longer tunnels when they have to go over/around cement… Been thinking about almost completely cementing my yard over =( I refuse to without a plan to make a “living roof” in the future though… so when I do cement it over, it will be of quality to hold a heavy building (may be able to afford the cement block for now, but the building is a ways in the future i think)…
In my neighborhood losing yard space is probably the number one concern of putting a driveway/cement patio in the yard… But if we could just raise the ground, we’ll get double the space and get to keep the yard for the kids! (will have to put a high fence up though). Sorry my writing is getting worse… Been working a lot lately w/ only about 10 mins on personal PC a day most of the time.
I have the same issue with the roses on the front yard. The branches grew all over. They looked like Escher drawings. I was told I have to aggressively prune them to promote growth and make it look nicer. The same thing with a citrus tree.
About the rats, have you tried using one of those ultrasonic pest control? They sell them on Amazon. I forget the brand name that I’m using, but it seems to work remarkably well. I use to get a lot of rat poop in my garage. With the ultrasonic device, my garage is clean all year long.