Citrus Care

Before you plant the citrus make sure the soil is well drained. You can add a amendment to improve the drainage of the soil. Adding a thin layer of  mulch on top of the soil helps the roots to be cool and reduces moisture loss from the soil. Put a 2-3″ layer under the tree’s canopy keeping it away from the  trunk. You also may want to check the soil for Ph.Citrus is 6-6.5Ph. Use a fertilizer labeled for citrus  after the citrus has been esptablished for like 2months. You do not need to put a fertilizer in the soil right away.  When you first plant the tree make sure the tree gets enough water. Water young trees three times a week in the warm season and water established trees once every two weeks except when it is warm then water it twice a week or when it is windy. Feed the tree every threemonths keeping the fertilizer away from the trunk or you may kill the tree. What you may make a little trench around the tree in which you water and put fertilizer. The bugs you will get can be snails, white flies,aphids,leaf miners, larva in fruit. You can use malathion which will kill the bugs as well as the snails- you can also sprinkle snail kill around the base of the tree but it will not kill the snails that are already in the tree. The last step is maintenance pruning. Make sure that you do not have branches  that are rubbing on each other or dead branches. I almost forgot and that is you need 5-6hrs of sunlight or you wil not get fruit or enough.