Citrus

Citrus are small evergreen trees with attractive glossy green leaves, fragrant white flowers and colourful fruit.  They prefer a sunny position sheltered from strong wind and frost.  Most are grafted, ensuring you have resilient, disease resistant rootstock and exactly the right cultivar growing up top.

 

To do well, water deeply once or twice a week in summer and keep soil moist when in fruit.  They also love regular feeding, so apply Dynamic Lifter for Citrus in usually late winter/early spring and late summer.   Avoid cultivating under citrus - they have a shallow root system and don’t like being dug over.   Citrus also can be grown in the ground or in pots.

 

Common pests and diseases to watch for are aphids, leaf miner and bronze orange bug, which can be controlled with Eco Oil, an organically approved spray, if used throughout the growing season.

 

Common Varieties

Orange

‘Washington Navel’ – seedless, early fruiting (May / June)

‘Valencia’ – most common variety, late fruiting (September / October). Fruit can remain on tree for 6 months

Blood oranges – red varieties include ‘Ruby’ and ‘Mattese’and ‘Cara Cara’ is an exquisitely

delicious orange. Which has a rich orange flavour with a touch of raspberries and rose.

 

 

Lemon

‘Eureka’ – vigorous variety with only a few thorns. Fruit in winter, spring and summer. Thick skin. Too vigorous for pot culture but is in great demand by the commercial and retail sectors, which crave the bitter tang of the lemon but by not getting seeds in your dishes.

 

‘Lisbon’ – cold tolerant variety with thorns. Fruits from autumn to winter

‘Meyer’ – hybrid. Cold tolerant variety that fruits all year round and has orange coloured, high juice content fruit.

 

Mandarin

‘Imperial’ – early fruiting variety (May) with small fruit but good flavour

‘Emperor’ – late fruiting variety (June / August)

‘Ellendale’ – fruiting in late August

 

Limes

‘Tahitian’ – seedless juicy fruit

‘Kaffir’ – less juicy fruit, leaves used in Asian cooking, spines.

 

Multi-grafted

‘Splitzer’ – two fruits on one tree (choose combination from lemon / orange or lime/ mandarin)

 

• Known and enjoyed for centuries by indigenous Australians, native limes offer you the most reliable trees with delicious, vivid, flavoursome fruit.

 

• Citrus Gems are a group of adaptable, quirky trees, uniquely Australian and tolerant of a wide range of climatic conditions.

 

They are suited for both pot and garden cultivation.

 

All Citrus Gems are grafted onto citrus rootstock, which ensure plant health, vigour and increases the plants ability to produce abundant crops of fruit from an early age.

 

Dwarf Trees

 

‘Pipsqueak’ are fantastic new dwarf citrus trees are perfect for small spaces and allows you to grow citrus when you have limited spacing

 

• Produces the fruit of its full-size cousin.
• Perfect for large pots and containers
• Available dwarf citrus varieties include lemons, limes, mandarins, & oranges

 

Native Citrus

 

Normally called finger limes, these differ from regular citrus in that their fruits are not segmented, and each juice cell instead forms like an egg sac of caviar.  They are finger shaped, and range in colour from deep purple to green and red.  Foliage is finer and can form a dense thicket, and has small spines on it every now and again, which makes it terrific for using as a barrier planting.

 

By: Meredith Kirton