No need to stake it but if you want to it no reason not to, I don't see a zone listed for you. That can make a difference on how you grow it. Do you have height limitation, 8 FT, !0 FT, vaulted ceiling. Will it fit in a window. Is it down south on a 10TH floor balcony in a high rise, No need to bring it in. In my personal situation its on top of my flat roof where it can get light. The choice is yours. Either choice is good.

Very nice looking tree and good luck with it

Thanks for the information. Sorry I left out the zone. I live in Flagstaff, Arizona at 7,000 ft elevation which I believe used to be classified zone 5 but was reclassified as zone 6 in recent years. Temperatures in the winter can get cold at night into the sub-zero range while generally in the 70-80's during the days of the summer months. The cold winter weather is why I decided to grow indoors.

My ceilings are 9-ft tall so there is quite a bit of room left for growth. I am still trying to find a way to get my tree some more sun light. I had thought of putting the tree outside during the summer but some of my pepper plants got a spider mite infestation towards the end of summer last year and I am worried about the same thing happening with my tree.

Wow! you are over feeding your tree; evidenced by the distorted leaves. For container plants they should be rotated every cupla weeks when you think about it, so the growth will be more even.

Why are you not growing your tree outdoors so it can get lots of energy, strong rot growth, fresh air and pure sunlight?

If you want the optimum growth for that tree and to build good energy reserves for the long winter months, try it.

Mike:-)

Mike

Would one have to take special step at high altitude where the humidity is almost 0%. My brother ,lives out there and I can tell you the sun is extremely UV dangerous. You do get very predictable sun every day so one could start exposing the tree at low sun level and increase. Could you suggest a plan. Is the wind a problem.

Sunshine is exactly what this tree needs. Acclimate the tree to outside, azhighcountry. This tree is exhibiting signs of etiolation. Which is what plants do that do not receive enough light - stretching and elongating to reach light. Start moving your tree to full sunshine over a 2 to 3 week period. Just make sure it's protected from winds, and make sure it receives enough water to keep it moist. You'll want to take advantage of your warmer temps during the spring, summer and early fall, and allow it to be outside as much as possible, so it will stop the etiolation behavior, and settle down, and produce foliage from the nodes. I would conside pruning the terminal bud to encourage lateral growth. Fertilize every watering with 1/2 strength DynaGro Foliage Pro until the tree starts to put out some new flush, then you can move to full strength. It will benefit from being outside in full sun :-)

Patty S.

I wanted to put the tree outside for at least a few hours today but the wind started blowing again. We get moderate to sometimes very high winds (80+ MPH) here and the wind has been blowing since February. Last summer, the tree became droopy after a few minutes of the wind. I have planted many trees outside and the poor trees get hammered by wind for months on end. The environment here can be harsh for growing anything between the extended droughts, large fluctuations in temperature from day-to-day, and high winds.

I normally keep the tree near an East facing window but just moved to a west facing this afternoon for some extra sunlight. Hopefully the wind will calm down. I will try to move the tree outside at least for some hours a day when the wind calms.

As for over feeding I have only once given the tree extra cirtrus fertilizer and there is the fresh extra soil from moving to a larger pot as needed.

This post was edited by azhighcountry on Sun, Jun 9, 13 at 19:39

how about building a wind brake for the citrus??
can be easy done with special netting

http://www.johnstowngardencentre.ie/green-windbreak-plant-protection-netting--50m---shelter-net/windbreakpd.aspx

If you can place the tree against a wall with a windshield in front you will have a better chance This wind shield could be glass or sheet plastic in a frame like a french window door. Well supported. I will be encasing my trees in a window casing of 4 wall 4 feet tall with no top for my wind problem on my rooftop where they reside, IN CINCINNATI!!! tAKE A LOOK AT THE TREES IN YOUR AREA. DO THE TREE HAVE THERE BRANCHES COMING OUT OT THE TRUNK FACING AWAY FROM THE WIND. iF SO, YOU CAN'T GROW THIS TREE OUTSIDE WITHOUT WIND BLOCKS.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED TO MY TREE AFTER HIGH WINDS AND A FEW OTHER ACCIDENTS

{{gwi:31428}}
BEFORE-- POTTED MEIWA KUMQUAT TREE GROWN FROM SEED

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AFTER OUTSIDE SEVERAL HIGH WIND STORM WITH WINDS SOARING UP TO 28 MPH

ON THE MEND BELOW
{{gwi:1914}}

NOT TOO PRETTY

SORRY FOR THE STUCK CAPS KEY

I WISH YOU WELL. ITS SUCH A GOOD LOOKING TREE AND IT IS FROM SEED!

This post was edited by poncirusguy on Sat, Nov 2, 13 at 19:22

I think you need to decide what you want from this tree.

You'll likely just grow it as a foliage house plant as I seriously doubt you'd ever get fruit. Ever.

Citrus from seed (esp oranges and grapefruit) have a very long juvenile period and the tree will need to obtain quite a height before that happens, a height that will not fit in your house. So you're going to have to prune it eventually. And if you prune, no fruit. So just enjoy as a nice houseplant.

Your outdoor environment sounds really intense. If it's growing well in a bright, sunny window, I'd leave it and cut it back to 'bush it up' a bit.

But that's just my opinion.

You can drive down to Phoenix for fresh citrus anyway! Just a couple of hours.

I disagree with you dave

We have 9 feet of ceiling height with 3'10" left. If we foliar feed the lower branches. The tree will fill out. If the tree grows to tall before flowering you can cut the very top off and cut out 4 feet from the top and graft the top to the tree 4 feet below. The tree has no way of knowing that 4 feet is missing and think it is much larger and start flowering. You can always top graft it with a meyer lemon. or a kumquat twigs.

Your tree is very nice looking so don't pitch it

As I said, azhighcountry will have to decide what the goal is. Is it for fruit or an interesting foliage plant?

Grafting is not particularly difficult, but is not for everyone. Even if the top bud of the tree were grafted to the bottom, it would still likely take many, many years to bear, and maybe even another graft would have to be done before then, since the growth is elongated from lower light levels.

I suppose the OP could obtain bearing scion wood from a bearing tree in Phoenix....or just purchase a bearing, grafted tree.

Phoenix is only 2 hours and 15 minutes away. They probably sell citrus at Home Depot there for cheap. It would make a great day trip in Winter to get away from the cold!

I'll agree with you on that. may be as little as 12.49 for a 5 gallon tree + gas.

Thanks for the ongoing feed back and suggestions. If I do setup a wind shield, I would probably have to heavily fortify the shield for those days with higher winds. I have been trying to grow a forest but a few trees have died I think due to the wind and sometimes also the wild animals. Most trees are holding up well though with strong enough and large stakes and some time to adapt to the environment. Last summer, the wind died down towards the end of June if I remember right so if that happens again around the same time there should still be a few months I can give my citrus tree some better sunlight.

As for my goals, my hope was to grow some different kinds of fruit trees but if the fruit growth does not happen, that is okay as well. I like my tree and plan to keep regardless. I originally grew around 9 apple trees from seeds and then planted an orange seed at the same time to see if there would be some growth. To my surprise, my first attempt with an orange seed was successful. The apple seeds were fairly successful as well and those trees I have already planted outside last summer. Unfortunately, some trees did not survive the winter, but so far I have two apple trees with new green leaves this summer.

I will look into the foliar feeding as well.

poncirusguy,

Sorry to hear about the wind damage. I like your trees and they look very nice overall!

This post was edited by azhighcountry on Wed, Jun 12, 13 at 23:47

I wanted to post a follow-up. Over the past few weeks, I have been gradually putting the tree outside a few hours a day. For the first few days, the new growth was drooping badly from the heat and wind. However, the tree has been outside the past several days around the clock and is no longer drooping and appears to have adapted to both the heat and mild winds. Winds have calmed a bit with the monsoons rolling in and I found a spot on the corner of the porch to help protect against some wind.

Since putting the tree outside, I have not seen any new etiolation. I have been watering every few days and have added citrus fertilizer again. What kind of fertilizer is recommend for foliar feeding? Here is an updated image of my tree enjoying the sun light.

azhighcountry

I am curious how your Valencia orange tree did last summer. Could you post pics

My Meiwa and Nagami kumquats did poor, sweetlee tangerine & poncirus trifoliata trees did great. They are now in prison for the winter

{{gwi:559710}}
Seed grown citrus & kumquats

Hello,

My citrus tree did decently during the summer. I kept the tree outside for around two months, perhaps a bit longer. Some of the leaves did get a bit damaged from the wind due to the leaves scraping against the thorns. I tried to protect the tree the best I could but the winds are harsh. The night time temps started to drop below freezing in mid September and I was forced to bring the tree indoors again. For two weeks I moved the tree outside during the day and indoors at night. The problem is that I only get a few hours of sunlight to the tree indoors each day. I am going to see if I can get a heat lamp or something similar to help.

I have a new small mandarin orange tree growing from seed which started out well. Unfortunately, there are two brown leaves now. I am thinking it may be due to potting medium which is holding too much moisture. I plan to change that out to something better for both trees. I am trying to locate the ingredients for the 5-1-1 and gritty mix which I plan to use for both my Citrus and Pine trees. You can see my small tree in a plastic cup in the larger container below.

I tried a batch of meiwa kumquat seeds last summer but had no success with germination for any of them. I think the seed batch may have been bad or the temps were not warm enough. I have a heating pad now to help keep the medium warm and some new seeds.

Sorry to hear about your kumquats. I am glad to hear at least some of your trees are doing well. You have a nice setup for your indoor trees.

This post was edited by azhighcountry on Sun, Nov 3, 13 at 0:04

Very nice looking tree. Don't waste any time or energy on kumquats from seed. They have very slow growing roots and the tree's root systems are much smaller in size in ratio to the tree than other citrus varieties. My kumquat grow well in winter but not summer because of the lack of root volume. Under the bucket light there is no moisture load on the small root system Thanks for posting the picture. I was interested in how well you did in an area with such intense wind and also that your tree is seed grown

{{gwi:23834}}
Seed grown meiwa at 21 months

{{gwi:576617}}{{gwi:576622}}
Smallest and largest of 4 seed grown sweetlee tangerine tress at 10.5 months

I wanted to share a picture of my Mandarin Orange tree in the gritty mix. I made a batch using Orchiata Classic Radiata Bark, Cherry Stone #2 Poultry Grit, and Diatomacous Earth (DE). The three ingredients were sifted using a Bonsai sift.

{{gwi:594781}}

I originally had this seedling in a Mel's Mix and some of the leaves turned yellow. Now the seedling is doing much better. I plan to move my larger Valencia Orange tree into this mix or the 5-1-1 mix when the weather warms up a bit. I am already using the 5-1-1 mix with my high elevation Pine seedlings. The 5-1-1 mix I made with the same bark only unsifted, coarse Perlite, and DE.

Jeroen

This post was edited by azhighcountry on Thu, Feb 27, 14 at 22:38