It's citrus feeding time, folks!

Don't you just love it when a plan works? I do. Last week, looking at the weather forecast, I spotted the magic word "rain" predicted for Tuesday August 24. And Huey the Rain God didn't let us down. The rain started late yesterday and it's still raining. 

A creature of gardening habits, I knew that the weeks spanning the end of August and the beginning of September are the ideal time to fertilise my citrus trees, so it was always at the top of my "to-do" list. All I needed was to wait for a good day of rain to come along, because that way the rain will water in the many handfuls of fertiliser I scattered around my Eureka lemon, Tahitian lime and Thai Makrut lime trees.

While I was at it and had plenty of fertiliser to spare, I scattered it around all manner of other plants that could do with a boost in spring, but the main game was feeding citrus. If you have a lemon, lime or other citrus tree in your garden, try to get out there over the next few days (showers are forecast through to the weekend) and your citrus trees will reward you with bumper crops.

I love a shiny footpath and water dripping off foliage. It means I have a day off from watering the garden, and I can watch the rain do the last stage of fertilising for me.

Both the lemon tree (pictured) and the lime are covered in flower buds right now, so a big feed is all they need to turn flowers into fruit.

The Eureka lemon is the ideal variety for Sydney gardens. In cooler climates the Lisbon variety is preferred, while the Meyer lemon is great in pots in all climates.

As is the Tahitian lime the ideal one for Sydney.

And this wrinkled weirdo is the Thai Makrut lime (also called the Kaffir lime), whose culinary value lies in the grated rind of the fruit (it produces hardly any juice), and the wonderfully aromatic foliage, which I toss into all sorts of South-East Asian curries and stir fries. The Thai lime is a great choice for pots, too, because it's naturally quite small.

This is my preferred citrus food not only because it's organic-based and the smelly aromas don't last long. It just happened to be what I had in the shed. 

Right now it's hard for locked-down gardeners everywhere to visit one of those big Hardware superbarns such as Bunnings. I actually bought my Dynamic Lifter a while back at my local Woolworths Supermarket, so try there if you don't have any in your garden shed at the moment.

There's also a small but well run local garden centre which I support by paying a bit more for the mulch, fertiliser, plants and seeds they stock, and it's still open. So maybe there's a small garden centre near you that is still open, or at least open for a click-and-collect shopping expedition?

In these difficult times, it doesn't really matter what you feed you citrus trees with. Almost any fertiliser I can think of is better than no fertiliser at all. If it says something about "fruit and flowers" then this is the good stuff, but even if the fertiliser just says "general purpose" you are in the citrus-feeding business.

Try to read the instructions on the pack before you get started. If you do your fertilising now, while the ground is wet and more showers are forecast, all you need to do is wait for a break in the rain, get out there like a mad person, laugh at the sky if the neighbours are watching, and scatter the fertiliser around the base of the tree. 

Don't direct the fertiliser at the tree trunk itself — there's no roots there. Instead, spread it out under the whole canopy of the tree, and especially around the ground directly below the outer edge of the canopy (that's called the 'dripline', because that's where most of the rainwater drips onto the ground).

The dripline area is where a healthy tree has oodles of roots. Direct your fertiliser there and let Huey the Rain God do the rest.

And after you've done the job and the poor locked-down neighbours with nothing to do are still watching, permit yourself to send one last chuckle skywards. All your gardening mates will know exactly how you feel.

Feeding citrus in pots

After my last posting on feeding citrus, several readers have emailed, and 'Anne at Home' left a comment here, asking about feeding citrus in pots, so here's my combo-reply posting to all you potted citrus persons.

How often do you feed them? Aim for monthly if you can (and that is so much easier said than done. Remembering is the hard part. I try to remember to do it around the first weekend of every month, but even keen-as-mustard-me forgets sometimes.)

Happy Thai limes.

Happy Thai lime in a pot.

How much do you feed them? Not a lot. Light feeds are best. 
• For my "flinging in the rain" I used one handful of chicken poo, which is about 75 grams.
• If I use a liquid organic plant food, about one whole 9-litre can (made up according to the instructions on the pack) per month is plenty for my mature trees in big pots.
• If I use a slow-release food, I apply 3-4 tablespoons of pellets to a 45cm diameter pot, and that lasts 6 months (a good option over Sydney's mild winter, or if you're away travelling).  

What do you feed them? Well, I like to mix it up a bit, but that's not essential. Over the last two years I have fed my potted citrus with:

Dynamic Lifter (organic chicken poo)
Dynamic Lifter Plus (for citrus, organic chicken poo with fruiting and flowering additives)
Osmocote for Fruit and Citrus (slow-release granules, lasting six months per application)
Powerfeed organic-based liquid food for fruit and flowers
Nitrosol organic-based liquid food

The reason for the mixing up of foods is mostly that was what was in my shed at the time, and all of them work fine, so for convenience's sake I just used whatever was there.

Our former cumquat tree, now happily
domiciled at Louise and Antonio's place.

Essential ingredient for cumquat marmalade!

A little bit of potted citrus whys and hows...
It's not just potted citrus that need to be fed more often, but lightly. It's everything in pots. Each time you water a pot, some of the potting mix's nutrients are washed away, out through the drain hole. Eventually all potting mixes completely run out of nutrients, and plants then might start to get unhappy (although some plants are more fussy than others, and citrus are world-class fuss-pots).

So, the big tip is that you need to constantly replenish a potted plant's food supply with little doses of food. Once a month is dandy.

That's why slow-release foods like Osmocote are so excellent for pots. They were originally designed (in California) for potted plants, with the special coating around each little pellet formulated so it releases its doses of nutrients more readily during warm and moist weather (when plants grow best) and releasing its nutrients more slowly when it is cool and dry (when plants grow slowest).

Furthermore, slow-release potted plant foods have the added advantage that you don't have to apply them so often. Depending on the product, they can last either three, six or 12 months. The Osmocote for citrus lasts 6 months.

The only drawback to slow-release foods is that they are not organic. They are just very sophisticated and extremely useful modern chemical plant foods. 

However, if you want your garden to be an organic one, especially your food garden, then I suggest the easiest organic food to apply is the liquid type, where you mix up a capful of concentrate in a can of water, and apply that to the pot. For a mature potted citrus tree, one whole can of 9-litres is plenty for a potted citrus in a big (45cm or more diameter) pot. If you have a smaller baby citrus tree in a pot, use your common sense and halve that amount, maybe even cut it down to one-third. (Mix up a whole can at a time, though, as the leftover liquid foods are great for any flowering food plant, from cucumbers to capsicums, tomatoes to zucchinis, etc etc). 

Hope this helps. Just remember, with the old saying about organic plant foods: "If it doesn't smell bad, then it's not organic!"

Flinging in the Rain

I'll never match Gene Kelly and his 'Singing in the Rain' routine, but I've just been dancing around our garden, flinging in the rain, and I feel just as good as Gene ever did.

You see, it's citrus fertilising time, and in recent years I've decided to abandon any pretence to sanity for this special occasion, and as soon as I hear the rain falling, I'm out in the garden with my bag of perfumed chicken poo, flinging it under our fruit trees, while the rain does the other important job – watering in the fertiliser while it gently soaks the skin of one slightly crazy old gardener.

As well as this 'Eureka' lemon tree we have
a 'Tahiti' lime and a Thai lime in a pot. They
all get a good feed now. For this lemon tree,
I give it about a dozen generous handfuls.
The potted citrus gets just one handful, but
I feed it several times a year, unlike its big
siblings planted in the ground.

For Australian (and I guess all other Southern Hemisphere gardeners) you should feed your citrus trees twice a year: at the end of summer (late February) and the end of winter (late August).

Now, as for what to use, your choices are many, but I go for chicken poo every time. Here in Australia it's sold under several brand names, but the biggest seller is Dynamic Lifter. Not all Dynamic Lifters are equal, though, so you should check out the labelling before you buy anything, as some products are "organic" and others are "organic-based".

Here's the "organic based" version, which I
spread around the garden this morning. As well
as the chicken poo, it contains non-organic
additives to boost its performance as a fruit
food. So, if you are ideologically pure when it
comes to organic gardening, it's a sin.
But if you are like me, and you practise all the
other organic gardening basics, such as using
compost and mulch to feed the soil and refraining
from the use of any nasty chemical sprays, then
a bit of organic-based rocket fuel to keep fussy
citrus happy isn't such a big sin. So there. 

However, if you are pure of heart and
purpose, an organic saint, there are forms
of manures sold which contain no additives,
and they're all great plant foods. Look for
the organic certification seals on the packet.
If it's the real thing, it should have them.

My excuse is that every second time round, I choose rocket fuel over standard fuel, and I think our citrus like that little boost to their diet.

The moral of the story, though, is that whatever you choose, use it now. You can do it in the sunshine and water the fertiliser in with a hose (the boring but sensible option), or you can do it in the rain, dancing around your garden like a slightly deranged, green-thumbed Gene Kelly. 

Tangy weather

One of the good things about gardening in backyards is that the rest of the street can't witness the strange things you sometimes get up to: like gardening in the rain.

Now, all my Sydney gardening friends don't need a weather report – we all know it has been raining for the last few days, and that it's likely to keep on raining for a while longer yet. So most sensible folk might think "oh well, it's raining, might as well read a book/watch a video/bake a cake/clean the house, etc etc".

But no, not this little gardener. "It's raining, yippee, time to feed some plants!" And so that's what I did today: I fed my three citrus trees. As a matter of fact, rainy days are the ideal times to pile on the fertiliser. That's because the theory is that you should water the ground well before applying plant foods. Rainy days take care of that little job for me. And then you should water the ground well after applying plant foods, to get the nutrients down into the soil. Thank you once more, rainy day!

Here in our temperate climate at least, it's best
to feed citrus grown in-ground twice a year,
at the end of summer (late Feb) and early spring
(late August). This is my Eureka lemon tree,
healthy and happy, always willing to scoff a bit
more food and produce some more juicy fruit.

It's not the prettiest lemon tree, having had a
rough childhood, bullied by the roots of a nearby
 climber which is no longer there. But it has bounced
back since the bully left, although it does lean to the
left slightly, like that famous tower in Italy.

Also getting a feed today was this person, the Tahiti lime, which
is grown espalier-style on a frame of solid wires suspended
between two swimming pool fence posts. This loyal trooper is about
10 years old now and is soldiering on nicely. It needs regular
clipping back (about two or three times a year) to maintain
its thinnish, wideish shape, but it's too lush with foliage to ever
take on the classic leafy 'arms' look of the fancy pear and apple
espaliers that you see in the designer gardening books.

There's only one problem with Tahiti limes and
that is they bear their fruit in a big bunch in
late summer and early autumn, then for the
rest of the year there's very few to enjoy.

Even though I religiously thin out fruits where
I can to cut down the gluts, I always miss a few
clusters and I end up with these bunches. 

The exception to the 'late summer/early spring'
feeding regime is potted citrus, such as this
potted Thai makrut lime. It gets fed lightly
but more often, around once a month is ideal.

As for what to feed citrus and how much, there's a stack of different options, each with its own instructions on the pack that are well worth following to the letter. 

For the potted makrut lime I prefer to use a slow-release product such as Osmocote for Citrus, but every now and then I give the pot a small half-handful of chicken poo, sometimes a bit of cow poo, if I am fertilising other plants nearby in the warmer growing season, when I am watering the pot a lot and it's probably growing faster than ever and can cope with a bit of a treat. The main thing is not to apply too much food to potted citrus trees at any one time, but to keep on giving it little feeds throughout the year.

As for the in-ground plants, I prefer an organic-based product such as Dynamic Lifter for Fruit and Citrus (for no special reason other than habit and good results). Notice I say it's "organic based" and not "organic". That's because so many good, useful modern plant foods now fall into this "organic based' category. They don't qualify as a purist organic product but that doesn't bother me greatly. The Dynamic Lifter, for example, is basically chicken poo, but these days the manufacturer (Yates) has added in trace elements to boost its effectiveness. 

My commitment to organic gardening is more to do with avoiding sprays which kill beneficial insects; to use methods which slowly but surely 'feed' the soil over the years with compost, manures and mulch; and to encourage a little backyard eco-system where birds, beetles, lizards, spiders, worms and all sorts of creatures find a home to share with us, and each other.