Thanks Bill for the fantastic overview of citrus growing in Hawaii. You should seriously write a book on what you've learned! Btw, have you ever done a video on living at altitude in Puna? I'm a cooler temperature guy, but I heard that it rains all the time at the higher elevations there. I wonder what the tradeoffs are. And in what you can grow.
I have one. If you search my channel you will find a lot of others about Puna in general but here is one on upper elevation. ruclips.net/video/F9wJIldPhL0/видео.html
Great info Bill. Your advice about pruning a couple of years ago really helped. My trees now look healthy and I’ve managed to keep them to a manageable size. I am trying to determine how to tell when my oranges are ripe for harvest. I also live in Mountain View at a slightly lower elevation than you. I’m not sure of the variety of orange I have, as it was on the property when I bought it.
Knowing the variety helps but physical inspection is actually more reliable. Some oranges slip some do not. On Oranges that slip, waiting until you see them falling is usually a good indication. On citrus that is tight to the stem sometimes color and always flavor will tell you when to pick. Pick some and eat it. If it is good, you are ready to pick. Valencia can be confusing because it will have two crops, one ripe, one not.
Thanks for the information. It will be be helpful. This one doesn’t seem to slip and the color never gets very orange like the ones I see in the stores so I’ll just have to try sampling’s until I learn what to look for. It has a good crop this year so I’m looking forward to it. Is there anything I can do to sweeten them? The ones I’ve had from previous crops never got very sweet no matter how long I let them ripen. I am not sure if any type of fertilizer would help.
Thanks for sharing your experience about which citrus trees grow well and which ones struggle a bit in your area. Interesting to learn about that. I'm growing about 25 different varieties in containers here in the PNW, and seem to have somewhat similar results because of the cool and wet weather.
We can get down to 50 degrees on a winter night and around 87 on summer afternoons. Not hot enough to sweeten grapefruit or color blood orange but not cold enough to put the color into sweet oranges. Everything inbetween works pretty good. Aloha
Great citrus video Bill, thanks for those updates, I have the old triple whammy with my citrus here in the UK, too cold and dark in Winter, too much rain and not hot enough in Summer 🤪🤪. Challenging just to keep them alive
@@GreenGardenGuy1 haha no point growing apples and pears here, ridiculously cheap to buy the fruits 12 months of the year in the supermarkets, I prefer to grow the stuff not available in shops like mulberry, asian pears, feijoa, figs etc. The citrus are more for a challenging hobby. I ate my first ever pawpaw last Fall, the fruit is unknown here in the UK
@@lyonheart84 The stuff was cheap in California too but quality was the issue. I really don't care what the fruit is as much as how perfectly it was grown. I never ate a better apple than the ones I used to grow in Wisconsin and California.
Definitely learned something listening to you talk about the tendency for citrus to seed more and hybridize and also about the root Stalks...so our Tenent’s tell us we have a kumquat treein our yard...it looks like a citrus and I have an app on my phone that identifies it as such...we also think we have date palms..haven’t been able to to spend as much time in our new lovely house as we want...😃🌈🤙
Kumquat is a citrus in it's own Genus of Fortunella. Good fruit, eat it skin and all. I can't keep track of every ones location. When you say you have Dates in the yard is this in Puna? It is possible that date might grow in the extra dry west side of Kohala. My guess is even there the relative humidity would make a moldy mess of the crop. Dates are desert crops. Puna is a jungle rain forest. Dates would be miserable here, the ID is most likely a mistake.
@@thomasreto2997 Wasn't sure what residence you referred too. Phoenix dactylifera is a subtropical desert palm. There is a plant, Phoenix roebelinii referred to as the Dwarf date palm. It grows here, I have two in my year but the fruit isn't even fit for birds.
Zone 9 to 11 are generally considered the citrus growing zones. 9 should be good for most types. I assume your condition has to be on the upper end rather than the lower end. The lower end in 9 is 20 degrees and usually not cold enough to damage anything other than Limes and some Lemons. Citrus that love heat are grapefruits, kumquats, blood oranges and tangelos. All of these should benefit from the more extreme ends of 9. Most tangerines are winter crops, hardy to cold and ripen out of extreme heat. These used to be a big deal in South Phoenix before the houses came. Kinnow, Dancy and Algerian were grown along with grapefruits and some sweet oranges.
Living in zone 8, I grow Persian limes, Ponderosa lemons, Yuzu, Owari & Kimbrough mandarin, Red limes, loquats and kumquats without having to protect them from frost.
Hi Bill, thanks again for so much information, we’re in aloha estates and trying to plan our 1/4 acre garden. Just curious how large is your property there? Mahalo and look forward to visiting your nursery. Aloha, Bob Zack
Thanks for the info. I was wondering if you could tell me what ammendments you recommend using when planting fruit trees in Puna? Azomite, calcium carbonate, bone meal, chicken manure pellets?
Mostly I use chicken pellets and slacked lime (calcium hydroxide) as fertilizer. I grow pigeon peas for chop and drop several times per year under the trees.
Thanks for your informative video. We live in lower Puna, about 1/2 mile inland from the coast & have several semi dwarf citrus varieties which came from Plant it Hawaii. Our Tahitian lime is doing really well, producing good crops almost year round. The honey tangerine has good crops most years. Ruby red grapefruit & Fisher navel orange are finally producing good crops after being in the ground for several years without bearing fruit. My problem is my improved Meyer lemon. It started off bearing heavy crops after it’s 2nd year, but has barely grown much after about 5 years, & this year the lemons that did set are small & tree has very few leaves. I think I’ll lose the tree. I’ve mulched it, fed it with triple 16 & don’t know what else to do to try to save it. We’re on lava & have had to build planting areas up, adding commercial garden soil as planting medium. Can you offer any suggestions?
I can't tell you what has gone wrong with the Meyer but it does sound like you might lose it. Meyer will grow from cuttings. If the tree is still strong enough I'd back a half dozen cuttings then go back to looking at the original. Root rots, main trunk damage or starvation would be the usual cause. Careful close inspection is about all I can suggest. If the cuttings take I would find them a new home and start over.
@@GreenGardenGuy1 thanks so much for your prompt reply. I didn’t know Meyers would start from cuttings… will they grow true? What type of growth should I try to take for the cuttings? Thanks again
@@deehovanski7004 They are easy enough from cuttings that nurseries seldom bother to graft them. When you make a cutting you have taken a piece from the plant and forced it to grow roots. It has no choice but to be identical to the plant it came from. I usually use branch ends 12" with the bottom end near pencil size. Rooting hormone helps.
Yes, it should do fine. I grew good Minneola in San Francisco bay area. We had to leave them hang in the tree for months after they turned orange though to sweeten them up. The half grapefruit parentage loves heat but the tangerine half is tolerant to cool conditions. The tree works in cooler conditions as long as you don't pick too early.
My citrus trees - Cara Cara, Daisy tangerine are about couple years, and a bit “leggyy” ? I went ahead and pruned a little and topped a a little off the top too. Will it eventually become a full-grown tree? I do feed my trees.
Pruning doesn't stop plant growth it actually tends to accelerate it. Removing the apical dominance from a shoot forces the shoot into a vegetative mode and growth rate increases. I can not see your trees but I would hope the "leggy" growth is just the sort of look many young trees have. You would have to prune it off at ground level to stop it from becoming a "full-grown tree."
Your citrus trees looks really healthy.............I have a Cara Cara, and it doesn't seem to be doing well, ie, leggy and not producing any fruits, about 4 years old. Any suggestions?
Would you say that Rhizomatous plants grow just the same at elevations in Puna as they do lower down? Like, not much difference between Fern Forest and Hawaiian Acres for things like ginger and turmeric right? Thanks!
Turmeric and ginger grow well down the hill or up to at least 2000 feet. Over that I am uncertain. They grow ginger across the street from me because we have deep soil in this area. Lava areas aren't suitable without some special arrangements.
Fertilizer applications vary widely depending on the product used, the soil type and the rainfall. My soil drains like sand and we get over 120" of rain a year. Nutrients disappear much faster than on a clay loam soil with less than 30". I use organic fertilizers, they tend to last a bit longer then the mineral salt types. I also use heavy mulches that hold the fertilizer. I toss pelletized chicken manure under the trees about 3 or 4 times a year. Older trees with larger roots need less. If you use a liquid fertilizer you need to feed ever 2 weeks or so.
With my hands, from a bag. Generally I use a pelletized chicken manure from Stutzman egg ranch in OR. It sells in 50 pound sacks and is the cheapest organic on the Island. I also grow pigeon pea as chop and drop. Kitchen mulch is also used. I spread it under the tree, cover it with cardboard and stick mulch from chop and drop. Hydrated lime is applied on occasion as well as borax and Epsom salts.
Do you know how to get tree to flower? My bearss lime tree is 4 feet tall won’t flower nor fruit but it’s in ground for 3 years now and every 2 months I feed it with with all purpose fertilizer or chicken manure at times besides whatever I can buy like citrus fertilizer too but it won’t give me a single flower except bugs at times on its tree. Any suggestions?
Bears usually flowers and fruits in a couple years. The time it takes to fruit depends on the root stock the tree is grafted too. I assume the tree is grafted to some sort of standard root stock. Do not prune the tree until after it fruits. Pruning will delay fruiting on citrus. Try some high phosphorous feed. Time is the only other reasonable answer. Make sure you do not have a sprouted rootstock.
@@KTx-nj8ei The term is "sprouted rootstock". Most citrus trees are grafted. This means you have the named variety on the top but the stem and roots are another plant that works well as a root stock. Sometimes the root stock will sprout and grow. If this happens they usually over run the named variety or scion. The original tree generally slowly dies away in the midst of the fast growing rootstock.
Will we be growing lettuce on Mars in 30 years? I'd lay money on it. Can you grow vanilla or caco in greenhouses? Absolutely, if you have the will. Cacao I've never seen in a house but I can imagine it. Vanilla I have seen grown in houses in California. If this is just a personal interest project then go for it. If it is a commercial venture then I would drop the idea unless I had a free source of energy for heat like a natural gas well or geothermal heat. The tropics, with cheap labor would kill your business. Hawaii gets by due to a natural climate for the crops, fairly cheap land and the price mystic of Hawaiian grown organic vanilla and chocolate.
@@GreenGardenGuy1 Its a personal interest, my goal is to homestead somewhere tropical, I'm thinking zone 9b that way I can grow deciduous fruit as well and as long as I can freely grow citrus, avocados, bananas, my main three picks I can be content growing anything else that needs a warmer climate in a greenhouse. Although I'm not sure if a greenhouse is a catch all solution in that regard.
@@jaredbowers8938 All of my videos recorded in California were in 9B. The climate in Fremont, CA along the San Francisco Bay was one of the finest cross overs on earth between temperate and subtropicals. In the hills around town they had a 10 that supported a few hardy tropical plants to. Lemons side by side with apple or avocados growing with Cherries boggles the mind. There are very few places like this on earth. Fremont's problem was real estate price booms, over population, California wild fires and terrible water shortages from drought. These are the main reasons I live in Puna and consider myself lucky even though I can't grow a cherry here.
![In-Ground Citrus Care Planting Tips [5 DOES & 5 DON'TS]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/5VPUevY-44Y/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks Bill for the fantastic overview of citrus growing in Hawaii. You should seriously write a book on what you've learned!
Btw, have you ever done a video on living at altitude in Puna? I'm a cooler temperature guy, but I heard that it rains all the time at the higher elevations there. I wonder what the tradeoffs are. And in what you can grow.
I have one. If you search my channel you will find a lot of others about Puna in general but here is one on upper elevation. ruclips.net/video/F9wJIldPhL0/видео.html
@@GreenGardenGuy1 Thanks Bill! Mahalo!
Great info Bill. Your advice about pruning a couple of years ago really helped. My trees now look healthy and I’ve managed to keep them to a manageable size. I am trying to determine how to tell when my oranges are ripe for harvest. I also live in Mountain View at a slightly lower elevation than you. I’m not sure of the variety of orange I have, as it was on the property when I bought it.
Knowing the variety helps but physical inspection is actually more reliable. Some oranges slip some do not. On Oranges that slip, waiting until you see them falling is usually a good indication. On citrus that is tight to the stem sometimes color and always flavor will tell you when to pick. Pick some and eat it. If it is good, you are ready to pick. Valencia can be confusing because it will have two crops, one ripe, one not.
Thanks for the information. It will be be helpful. This one doesn’t seem to slip and the color never gets very orange like the ones I see in the stores so I’ll just have to try sampling’s until I learn what to look for. It has a good crop this year so I’m looking forward to it. Is there anything I can do to sweeten them? The ones I’ve had from previous crops never got very sweet no matter how long I let them ripen. I am not sure if any type of fertilizer would help.
Thanks for sharing your experience about which citrus trees grow well and which ones struggle a bit in your area. Interesting to learn about that. I'm growing about 25 different varieties in containers here in the PNW, and seem to have somewhat similar results because of the cool and wet weather.
We can get down to 50 degrees on a winter night and around 87 on summer afternoons. Not hot enough to sweeten grapefruit or color blood orange but not cold enough to put the color into sweet oranges. Everything inbetween works pretty good. Aloha
Great information. Thanks for sharing!
Glad it holds value for you. Aloha
Thanks for all the Information. I planned on out looking for tree replacements tomorrow. Have a great night, day.
Good timing them.
Great citrus video Bill, thanks for those updates, I have the old triple whammy with my citrus here in the UK, too cold and dark in Winter, too much rain and not hot enough in Summer 🤪🤪. Challenging just to keep them alive
Not to spoil your fun there but I believe I'd be growing pears and apples! Sure wish I could. Aloha
@@GreenGardenGuy1 haha no point growing apples and pears here, ridiculously cheap to buy the fruits 12 months of the year in the supermarkets, I prefer to grow the stuff not available in shops like mulberry, asian pears, feijoa, figs etc. The citrus are more for a challenging hobby. I ate my first ever pawpaw last Fall, the fruit is unknown here in the UK
@@lyonheart84 The stuff was cheap in California too but quality was the issue. I really don't care what the fruit is as much as how perfectly it was grown. I never ate a better apple than the ones I used to grow in Wisconsin and California.
Definitely learned something listening to you talk about the tendency for citrus to seed more and hybridize and also about the root Stalks...so our Tenent’s tell us we have a kumquat treein our yard...it looks like a citrus and I have an app on my phone that identifies it as such...we also think we have date palms..haven’t been able to to spend as much time in our new lovely house as we want...😃🌈🤙
Kumquat is a citrus in it's own Genus of Fortunella. Good fruit, eat it skin and all. I can't keep track of every ones location. When you say you have Dates in the yard is this in Puna? It is possible that date might grow in the extra dry west side of Kohala. My guess is even there the relative humidity would make a moldy mess of the crop. Dates are desert crops. Puna is a jungle rain forest. Dates would be miserable here, the ID is most likely a mistake.
@@GreenGardenGuy1 thank you. . We are in puna at roughly your elevation. Date palms it may be a mistake.
@@thomasreto2997 Wasn't sure what residence you referred too. Phoenix dactylifera is a subtropical desert palm. There is a plant, Phoenix roebelinii referred to as the Dwarf date palm. It grows here, I have two in my year but the fruit isn't even fit for birds.
@@GreenGardenGuy1 not sure, but we like the trees, one of these days when we are there, we will stop by and buy some stuff from you
@@thomasreto2997 Aloha
Good info, I have a clementine in Keaau
Good choice. I like clementine. They are seedless when standing alone too. Wish I could decide on just one tree myself! Aloha.
Thanks for the great video do you have recommendations for citrus that will experience extreme shifts in temperature for zone 9?
Zone 9 to 11 are generally considered the citrus growing zones. 9 should be good for most types. I assume your condition has to be on the upper end rather than the lower end. The lower end in 9 is 20 degrees and usually not cold enough to damage anything other than Limes and some Lemons. Citrus that love heat are grapefruits, kumquats, blood oranges and tangelos. All of these should benefit from the more extreme ends of 9. Most tangerines are winter crops, hardy to cold and ripen out of extreme heat. These used to be a big deal in South Phoenix before the houses came. Kinnow, Dancy and Algerian were grown along with grapefruits and some sweet oranges.
Living in zone 8, I grow Persian limes, Ponderosa lemons, Yuzu, Owari & Kimbrough mandarin, Red limes, loquats and kumquats without having to protect them from frost.
Hi Bill, thanks again for so much information, we’re in aloha estates and trying to plan our 1/4 acre garden. Just curious how large is your property there? Mahalo and look forward to visiting your nursery. Aloha, Bob Zack
We have two acres. You are in the cloud forest zone. The break line between the two lower climate zones is around 2000 feet.
So glad I subscribed to your channel, just a follow up , what can you sell me for my 1/4 acre? Fruits and veggies, and thanks again. Bob
Thanks for the info. I was wondering if you could tell me what ammendments you recommend using when planting fruit trees in Puna? Azomite, calcium carbonate, bone meal, chicken manure pellets?
Mostly I use chicken pellets and slacked lime (calcium hydroxide) as fertilizer. I grow pigeon peas for chop and drop several times per year under the trees.
I see a lot of trees on the Big Island videos that are over run with vines like Kudzu in the US Souteast. What are those vines in Hawaii?
We have several morning glory relatives, Maile pilau, and occasionally Allamanda that cover trees abandoned by gardeners.
Thanks for your informative video. We live in lower Puna, about 1/2 mile inland from the coast & have several semi dwarf citrus varieties which came from Plant it Hawaii. Our Tahitian lime is doing really well, producing good crops almost year round. The honey tangerine has good crops most years. Ruby red grapefruit & Fisher navel orange are finally producing good crops after being in the ground for several years without bearing fruit. My problem is my improved Meyer lemon. It started off bearing heavy crops after it’s 2nd year, but has barely grown much after about 5 years, & this year the lemons that did set are small & tree has very few leaves. I think I’ll lose the tree. I’ve mulched it, fed it with triple 16 & don’t know what else to do to try to save it. We’re on lava & have had to build planting areas up, adding commercial garden soil as planting medium. Can you offer any suggestions?
I can't tell you what has gone wrong with the Meyer but it does sound like you might lose it. Meyer will grow from cuttings. If the tree is still strong enough I'd back a half dozen cuttings then go back to looking at the original. Root rots, main trunk damage or starvation would be the usual cause. Careful close inspection is about all I can suggest. If the cuttings take I would find them a new home and start over.
@@GreenGardenGuy1 thanks so much for your prompt reply. I didn’t know Meyers would start from cuttings… will they grow true? What type of growth should I try to take for the cuttings? Thanks again
@@deehovanski7004 They are easy enough from cuttings that nurseries seldom bother to graft them. When you make a cutting you have taken a piece from the plant and forced it to grow roots. It has no choice but to be identical to the plant it came from. I usually use branch ends 12" with the bottom end near pencil size. Rooting hormone helps.
Would a Minneola Tangelo be a good choice for coastal Southern California? Thanks in advance.
Yes, it should do fine. I grew good Minneola in San Francisco bay area. We had to leave them hang in the tree for months after they turned orange though to sweeten them up. The half grapefruit parentage loves heat but the tangerine half is tolerant to cool conditions. The tree works in cooler conditions as long as you don't pick too early.
My citrus trees - Cara Cara, Daisy tangerine are about couple years, and a bit “leggyy” ? I went ahead and pruned a little and topped a
a little off the top too. Will it eventually become a full-grown tree? I do feed my trees.
Pruning doesn't stop plant growth it actually tends to accelerate it. Removing the apical dominance from a shoot forces the shoot into a vegetative mode and growth rate increases. I can not see your trees but I would hope the "leggy" growth is just the sort of look many young trees have. You would have to prune it off at ground level to stop it from becoming a "full-grown tree."
Your citrus trees looks really healthy.............I have a Cara Cara, and it doesn't seem to be doing well, ie, leggy and not producing any fruits, about 4 years old. Any suggestions?
It sounds short of fertilizer. Try an organic citrus food.
Would you say that Rhizomatous plants grow just the same at elevations in Puna as they do lower down? Like, not much difference between Fern Forest and Hawaiian Acres for things like ginger and turmeric right? Thanks!
Turmeric and ginger grow well down the hill or up to at least 2000 feet. Over that I am uncertain. They grow ginger across the street from me because we have deep soil in this area. Lava areas aren't suitable without some special arrangements.
@@GreenGardenGuy1 Right on. Thanks for the reply!
How often do you fertilize the citrus trees?
Fertilizer applications vary widely depending on the product used, the soil type and the rainfall. My soil drains like sand and we get over 120" of rain a year. Nutrients disappear much faster than on a clay loam soil with less than 30". I use organic fertilizers, they tend to last a bit longer then the mineral salt types. I also use heavy mulches that hold the fertilizer. I toss pelletized chicken manure under the trees about 3 or 4 times a year. Older trees with larger roots need less. If you use a liquid fertilizer you need to feed ever 2 weeks or so.
How do you fertilize?
With my hands, from a bag. Generally I use a pelletized chicken manure from Stutzman egg ranch in OR. It sells in 50 pound sacks and is the cheapest organic on the Island. I also grow pigeon pea as chop and drop. Kitchen mulch is also used. I spread it under the tree, cover it with cardboard and stick mulch from chop and drop. Hydrated lime is applied on occasion as well as borax and Epsom salts.
Do you know how to get tree to flower? My bearss lime tree is 4 feet tall won’t flower nor fruit but it’s in ground for 3 years now and every 2 months I feed it with with all purpose fertilizer or chicken manure at times besides whatever I can buy like citrus fertilizer too but it won’t give me a single flower except bugs at times on its tree. Any suggestions?
Bears usually flowers and fruits in a couple years. The time it takes to fruit depends on the root stock the tree is grafted too. I assume the tree is grafted to some sort of standard root stock. Do not prune the tree until after it fruits. Pruning will delay fruiting on citrus. Try some high phosphorous feed. Time is the only other reasonable answer. Make sure you do not have a sprouted rootstock.
@@GreenGardenGuy1 what is a sprout rootstock?
@@KTx-nj8ei The term is "sprouted rootstock". Most citrus trees are grafted. This means you have the named variety on the top but the stem and roots are another plant that works well as a root stock. Sometimes the root stock will sprout and grow. If this happens they usually over run the named variety or scion. The original tree generally slowly dies away in the midst of the fast growing rootstock.
Do you think its possible to grow cacao and vanilla in greenhouses? google isn't giving me a clear answer
Will we be growing lettuce on Mars in 30 years? I'd lay money on it. Can you grow vanilla or caco in greenhouses? Absolutely, if you have the will. Cacao I've never seen in a house but I can imagine it. Vanilla I have seen grown in houses in California. If this is just a personal interest project then go for it. If it is a commercial venture then I would drop the idea unless I had a free source of energy for heat like a natural gas well or geothermal heat. The tropics, with cheap labor would kill your business. Hawaii gets by due to a natural climate for the crops, fairly cheap land and the price mystic of Hawaiian grown organic vanilla and chocolate.
@@GreenGardenGuy1 Its a personal interest, my goal is to homestead somewhere tropical, I'm thinking zone 9b that way I can grow deciduous fruit as well and as long as I can freely grow citrus, avocados, bananas, my main three picks I can be content growing anything else that needs a warmer climate in a greenhouse. Although I'm not sure if a greenhouse is a catch all solution in that regard.
@@jaredbowers8938 All of my videos recorded in California were in 9B. The climate in Fremont, CA along the San Francisco Bay was one of the finest cross overs on earth between temperate and subtropicals. In the hills around town they had a 10 that supported a few hardy tropical plants to. Lemons side by side with apple or avocados growing with Cherries boggles the mind. There are very few places like this on earth. Fremont's problem was real estate price booms, over population, California wild fires and terrible water shortages from drought. These are the main reasons I live in Puna and consider myself lucky even though I can't grow a cherry here.