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SEED POWER SEED POWER * RA-RA-RA

They look great. How old are they. They will have to get much taller before they will fruit.

From the beautiful background decor, I am going to guess that you are an artist and possibly a musician. Either way, very nice decorations.

I myself am a professional hoarder. Here are my sweetlee tangerine trees from seed among my priceless garbage. The link below give access to my sweetlee trees growing.

Steve

Here is a link that might be useful: https://plus.google.com/photos/111099372377958308731/albums/5961857381151877457?banner=pwa.

Um not sure a couple years old. Yes I love to draw I took art all 4 years of high school. I love it my science teacher had orange trees she grew from seeds the leaves smell so good that's what got me into citrus trees.

honesty don't have a clue what type of soil there In and have never fertilIzed them I do water with my fish tank water occasionally After I clean them out.

Those orange trees look very lush. I just started with citrus seeds myself a few weeks ago so its great to see what I might have in a few years.

P.S. Every time I see your name I hear, "Oh, Punky!" in the admonishing tones of that old man from the Punky Brewster show. Fun

Lol I use to love that show as a kid. Thanks they stay inside 24/7.

Its a waste of time to grow a citrus tree from seed. Buy a grafted tree.

It's not a waste of time if you just want to enjoy the plant and smell the leaves. Plus it's fun to raise your own plants from seed!

But RyanLo is probably thinking it's a waste of time if you want fruit. In that aspect he's right, you will probably not get fruit from the seed grown oranges, at least not for many, many years, could be up to 15-20 in some cases. Most oranges will grow true from seed, so it will be the same orange fruit if and when it may produce fruit.

But if you're having fun growing from seed and you just enjoy the plants, I don't see it as a waste of time, if you're having fun!

yep thats why i bought a dwarf lemon and a dwarf orange and then just ordered a 3n1 citrus tree friday so i could get some fruit.

Barb, Lets not be silly with the technicalities, we all know if you are growing a citrus tree you want citrus fruit. Besides, if you want a foliage plant we can probably all agree there are better options.

I have several friends that have seed grown citrus trees. They have no interest in getting fruit from them. They grew them because they like the appearance and for fun. Mary has 7 trees. She no longer remembers what fruit they are. She has had them for 7+ years. The other friends just have 1 or 2 trees. I grew my poncirus trifoliata and sweetlee tangerine trees from seed for the rootstock for kumquat grafting. It appears that kumquat trees will fruit in about 3+ years.

Steve

I love the fun of sprouting the seeds and watching them grow.

Well, Ryan I didn't think I was being silly, especially with technicalities. Cool, I got technically silly without even trying! ; )

I'm pretty sure I said she wouldn't get fruit in a long time, if ever, with those trees.

And what Steve said.

That's why I bought the ones so I could have some that will fruit.

OK guys whatever, if growing citrus from seed makes you happy I certainly don't want to get in the way of it.

Ryan

I started my trees (Meiwa kumquat) because I wanted fruit and could not justify buying a 18 inch tree for $65. Trees with small fruit will produce quickly from seed 3-6 years. When the tree does start fruiting I will have a 5 ---- 10 foot tree full of gusto and ready to fruit. When the kumquat tree would not grow well I planted sweetlee tangerine seeds for trees for grafting rootstock material. If my kumquat tree had grown like my sweetlee tree,I would be picking some fruit by now. My kumquat tree is 1.7 time older than the sweetlee trees. Now that I know how hard it is to grow citrus trees this far north, I would not waste the money on any citrus tree. I will continue growing mine but am planting no new seeds.

I would guess that most people who plant trees want fruit, but a small Number do not and that is when seeds come.

The tree below is my sweetlee from seed at 5 feet tall and growing like a weed

I have grafted trees that I bought that will produce fruit but like to grow from seeds for the fun of it :)

Pguy- well that sums it all up perfectly - after growing citrus from seed you have given up on citrus. you are not planting more seedlings and you don't want fruit from your tree. Your Meiwa that could have been huge and could have has lots of fruit is not doing well and will probably not make it much longer.(As you probably have found out Meiwa is one of the worst on its own roots) in other words its been a complete failure.

The reason I said Buy A Grafted Tree is because people use this forum as a resource for advice and information about growing and producing citrus - I sure did when I started. Giving information or advise that will lead to failure is not what we should be advocating on this forum.

Its not rocket surgery, a grafted tree is the way to go for success with citrus.

Ryan - - YOU ARE WRONG !!!!

I bought a grafted meiwa tree on Ebay for $54. They stood me up and I had a hard time getting my money back. Had I known about Harris Citrus and their $20 tree with $13 shipping I would have bought 2 trees for only $10 more.

BOTH OF MY TREES WOULD HAVE DIED..

Those tree would have never made it past my learning curve. I lost over 300 trees before I learned enough to grow citrus correctly. I bought meiwa fruit plus PT seeds to have rootstock to graft my meiwa trees to. Yes I agree that if you want fruit it is best to get a grafted tree or know how to graft your own. Meiwa trees from seed fruit in about 3 years. That is fine with me. My sweet lee tangerine tree could flower in 5 years. It is growing very well. When my sweetlee does flower, the tree will have some real substantial growth to support the fruit. I may still be successful in top grafting the meiwa to the sweetlee.

BTW The root system on my kumquat trees are very healthy and robust. It is the foliage that keeps getting attacked by spider mites that is the problem or I would have a very nice tree about 75% the size of my younger sweetlee.

Some people still just grow citrus for its novelty and beauty and do not expect fruit.

How many bushels of fruit do you get from each one of your potted citrus trees. After all you are zone 7 B to my 6 b micro.

Steve

PS the second in ground sweetlee tangerine tree from seed

This post was edited by poncirusguy on Wed, Oct 1, 14 at 15:12

Basically this sums it up:

You can grow citrus plants from seed to get an interesting foliage plant with aromatic leaves. Some varieties may eventually fruit in a pot; some may never. The time it takes to reach mature fruiting wood varies from one variety to another. For the long-juvenile varieties, topmost growth could be rooted and grown on. Of course, this method could take 15-20 years or more! Kumquats and calamondins are known to produce at an earlier age. Grapefruit are notorious for long juvenile periods. Beware, when growing seedlings in pots especially in the 'north', this juvenile period can last even longer. Reports of short juvenile periods often come from warm climates where the growing season is 9 months of the year or more.

If you want fruiting plants in a 'reasonable' time frame (say like in a year or two), buy a plant grafted with a known variety, that is of decent size to produce. In some cases, you can grow from cuttings of mature wood (Meyer lemons are often grown from cuttings).

Read up on potting mediums that have been successful for others. Research which citrus are best in pots and on which rootstock. Beware of EBay and of dealers who do not describe the plant in detail or use known cultivar names (a plant described only as 'dwarf citrus' could be a calamondin or maybe a Rangpur Lime -- and not an 'orange' by any imagination). Buy from reputable nurseries.

I wanted to add one more thing. Growing citrus from seed is a good and cheap way to learn how to grow citrus in pots. If they die, no big deal. Start over and amend your methods or do more research.

This post was edited by dave_in_nova on Wed, Oct 1, 14 at 19:58

Pguy - Sorry to hear about your e-bay experience, that is unfortunate. I am also sorry you had to kill 300 trees to learn, jeez man! I'm surprised those seedlings haven't sprouted some running shoes.

I am not wrong. All of the reputable people on this forum that have success with fruiting citrus are growing grafted trees, its that simple. I have had much more experience with successfully growing and fruiting many different citrus cultivars out of zone then you have.

I don't measure my fruit in bushels because I am not a commercial producer and don't want to be, If I wanted to be a commercial producer I would move to California and I don't want to move to California(no offense California). I would also have to talk to John all the time and I don't want to do that either. Hes always going on and on about how New Zealand or somewhere is the best place to grow lemons or whatever. So, I just stick with the way i know best, I measure my fruit in the old fashioned way, by count.

In Zone 7b this year I'll have somewhere in the range of 150 blood oranges of different varieties, 200 or so lemon and limes of different varieties, 200 mandarins of different varieties and 200 to 300 kumquats of different varieties and 50 or so odd varieties like pummels hybrids. Plus, 40 of the mandarins are the new variety Dekopan aka Sumo that I have only had for ONE season. that's right 40 fruit after ONE growing season. and actually they are seed grown, Oh...actually no, they aren't they are GRAFTED!

Look Pguy, If growing citrus from seeds makes you happy that's great but don't go around recommend it to everyone, its a recipe for disaster and everyone with experience knows it. And don't try and get me with the rootstock thing, I'm not talking about rootstock. 99% of the people wanting to grow citrus should not be growing from seed. Again, buy a grafted tree.

Dave

Right on you analysis. It takes more time to get fruit from a seed grown tree as to how far north you are and the fruit size. Anything much larger than a kumquat or key lime would not be worth growing from seed this far north or in a container. I would not even waste my time on a grapefruit if I lived in any zone. I have 2 Meyer lemons from mature wood cuttings that are doing fine. If i can top graft my sweetlee with kumquat scion, I should get fruit from a 6 ft tree in 2 years. I agree that I have learned how to succeed with a grafted meiwa. I have decided that I am not going to get a grafted tree and I will grow some thing other than citrus but to my liking.

Ryan

It is true that my interest was in fruit production but didn't know enough the importance of a grafted tree and chose seed. My trees are not in my way and are a hobby to me. I am done with my citrus endeavor but I plan to keep my tree as long as they live. They are very attractive. Their are a lot of people on the citrus forum that grow some citrus trees from seed.

I am still getting a lot out of my citrus tree beyond fruit and they have paid off. Here is a close up of my exploding in ground seed grown sweetlee

Steve

That plant in the photo looks awfully thorny for a tangerine. Sure it's a tangerine? I've tried to look it up, but can't find anything under tangerine or mandarin with the name 'Sweet Lee'.

Perhaps it's a tangelo hybrid? Or a tangelo crossed with a mandarin? Is it the same as 'Lee'?

Just curious.

How about growing the trees from seed and then grafting them when they are ready?

I have a few exotic varities I grew from seed. I also have been growing some Poncirus to use as root stock.

I bought PT seeds to grow rootstock for my meiwa. When I found that I could not graft to my pt I found some "Sweetlee" tangerines at the store and bought them for the flesh. I kept the seed anyway to grow rootstock for my meiwa. The sweetlee and PT trees are growing well with the PT doing significantly better than the Sweetlee. My meiwa is doing well at this time. I hope to graft some meiwa buds to it next year. I do have a nagami now being grafted to my PT. I hope it takes.

Steve

PS My Nagami and poncirus bend graft

This post was edited by poncirusguy on Wed, Jan 28, 15 at 13:05

My Meiwa kumquat is bug free and doing very well. I am going to leave her there over the winter under glass to keep it above 40 F. The roots are above a heated room with no atic air space and the roots should hold around 60 F or above. There will be no other citrus trees in with meiwa to share pests. Once the new growth hardens over I let it get frosted. Picture of the twin 18+ inch trunks.

Ryan Very impressive citrus collection. I was referring to my case that you were wrong. There is no question that growing grafted citrus trees is the way to go if you want fruit.

jacklord I remember about 2 years ago yo had a kumquat tree from seed that was spindly. that you would halve to graft it. How is that tree doing.

Thanks all for your input.

Steve

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Can't believe how well they grew considering all I did was stick some seeds out of an orange I ate in a old pot with old soil never fertilized started them outside then as soon as they started to grow brought them in and never put them back outside.

I have grown between 5-7 apple trees from seed, but never tried with an orange. With my apple seeds I usually just take them straight from the core and put them between two damp paper towels in a 3"x10"x16" plastic container covered with saran-wrap. Do you get your orange seeds to sprout? In the same basic way as I do my apple seeds, or is there a better method that you use?

Honesty all I did was eat some kind of orange and stick the seeds straight in a old flower pot that was laying around with old potting soil and watered lol

I broke the outer shell of the citrus seeds with out damaging inside embryo then placed the seeds in dirt in a closed container of about 1 pint. I placed this container inside my heat vent so the furnace would heat the soil and seeds to about 90F-100F My seeds came up in about one week.

I can think of one other reason to grow citrus from seed. That would be to obtain and grow very unusual varieties that are next to impossible to find in commerce... such as Lemandarin, Clem-yuz, Citrange, Citrangequat, etc.

That is, if you can find someone to give you the seeds! LOL! But often it's easier to locate seeds than plants.

Most of these grow true to type.

Admittedly, this endeavor is more for the experienced grower.

Scion material sent thru the mail would be even better. But only where permissible.

Ryan you are cracking me up. I do have to agree with you though.

Hey Dave. How have you been. Any trips to Tulsa lately. Its going to 80 degrees today!

Steve. I get about 2 dozen meyer lemons from a tree that is only 4' tall. Plenty for a pie or 2 plus some drink. My 4' tall key lime gives us about 3-4 dozen fruits. My 3' tall Armstrong Satsuma gave me about 15 fruit this year. My trees are now 5 years old and I payed no more than $20 each locally. A couple I got on clearance for $5.

here is my Fukushu Kumquat July of 2011 when I bought it for $5.
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here it is back in August 2014 It regularly gives me 100's of fruit now and has been for a year or so.
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Ill put in my 2 cents on this subject. My first trees were seedling store bought lemons. I knew very little about citrus at the time but those 2 gave me the bug. I still have them because of that.
Now I will never grow anything but a grafted tree. with one exception. I found a seed inside a Dekopan and was able to sprout it. I will however be replacing it with a grafted one soon. My thought is Im not going to spend hours caring for and $$$'s feeding and tending to a tree that will not return the favor. At least not immediately. I have gotten pretty lucky that most of my trees where bought at Lowes on clearence about 4-5 years ago so the initial cost has been low. Since then I have only found the most common varieties and pricing is pretty crappy on them. I hate paying shipping.

Now I have shifted my focus to peaches, plums, apples, grapes etc. Plants that will work for me and not the other way around. Put them in the ground, prune a couple times a year and spray. No re-potting and moving indoors in the winter. No fussing over the right temps or overwatering. Even thought I have all that figured out now, LOL.

Ill still have my citrus and pay the same attention to them but I wont be adding any more than 1 or 2 that I have always wanted.

mike

Both of my Meyer lemon trees are flowering and the much smaller one has fruit. They are both from rooted cuttings.

Here is the cluster of flowers.
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full tree before insect stripped 60 of foliage.
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Steve

The stronger Meyer lemon in a 30 gallon container is setting some very aggressive growth and has a few flowers.
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The shoots

Steve

My sweetlee is now 2 years old. It has been suggested that sweetlee is possibly a hamin or Parson Brown. Either way it is growing very well and ha awakened to spring time greenhouse highs from the 70's to 104F.

Here she is at 2 years old from when sweetlee spouted from seed sprout.
{{gwi:2124218}}

Fresh growth in the past 2 weeks

Mike
Your trees look fantastic. Thanks for sharing the pictures. Here in Cincinnati we can chose from Lowes a 3 pint calamondin, Meyer lemon, or key lime for $39. From Home depot I could get a 3 gallon Meyer lemon, Unnamed satsuma, blood orange for only $49 just rescued from end of World War 2 Dresden Germany. This was after all my trees were growing and I had inherited 2 Meyer lemon trees in need of ICU hospital wing.

Steve

Steve, it will be exciting when you get your first fruit to set.

Mksmith, your trees are beautiful. I'm glad you haven't given up on citrus entirely aa you grow them so well.

Cory

I know I gave up on my seedlings and bought some rooted cuttings

Tangerines and mandarins take 3to 5 years orange trees take 10-15 from seed as do grapefruit. I have a few seed grown mandarins that should have fruit in a year and half can't wait love Steve's trees. Punky I would still let my orange trees grow they might surprise u.
Trace

This post was edited by Tcamp30144 on Wed, Jan 28, 15 at 23:34

I didn't have room for them and my cuttings so I had to get rid of them I really want fruit.

Thanks all. I wont ever stop growing citrus Im just not expanding my collection much more than 1 or 2 additional. My plan is for them all to eventually get into about 20 gallon pots then possibly reside in those with yearly root pruning. Im not getting any younger and this knee isnt getting any better. Big pots are heavy to move every winter. But i have a plan for that too. I plan to eventually put mine in the ground and build a hoop house over them and removing the cover during the summer to get real sunshine. That way I can just prune them to size and never move pots around anymore.

I never moved my seedlings outside they did great inside 24\7 I just decided I wanted fruit so I got rid of them and got my cuttings.

Which varieties of citrus do best for own-root, grown from seed? I think there's something to be said for being natural. And I refuse to believe it is absolutely impossible to grow any type of decent citrus fruit without having to use grafting.

Edit: Another discussion in this forum says that many citrus varieties can be grown own-root, but some maybe less sweet, and the roots require more frequent irrigation and are more vulnerable to disease.
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/citrus/msg012036217931.html

And for some citrus varieties, the fruit resulting from the seedlings may be significantly different from the parent. It's all luck of the draw with the genes, and once the breeders found a winner they simply resorted to clonal propagation.

For planting citrus seeds, one of the really helpful things is to carefully peel off the slimy covering over the seed, it helps the seed begin to grow much sooner, otherwise it takes time for this protective layer to rot away in the soil.

This post was edited by Socal2warm on Mon, Feb 2, 15 at 21:14

Socal:

Which varieties of citrus do best for own-root, grown from seed?

I think it depends on whether this is being grown in a container or in-ground. If in the ground, where you live is important. Florida may have more soil-borne disease issues for many citrus. Perhaps California a bit less.

Then there's the issue of whether a particular variety even grows true from seed or not. Most do, but many do not -- such as Clemantine, Pummelos, Temple, Thompson's pink grapefruit, Persian lime.

If your goal is to get really good fruit for your region, do your homework, talk to local growers, taste a lot of varieties, and likely get a grafted tree.

For most people, space and time are issues. Do you really want to invest in a seed-grown tree that could take 10 years or more to bear, that could be incredibly thorny, that may be susceptible to soil-borne pathogens, and that may not bear exceptional fruit?

It makes me wonder why they have not bred more citrus varieties which do well on their own roots.
It might just have been easier for them to breed for selective traits separately, and then just put them together in a graft. Surely it must be possible to breed a plant to do well own-root, but may likely have taken many more generations of breeding, and harder to obtain the desirable traits. It's a similar story with roses.

I think ALL of the commercial grown citrus is grown on grafted trees.

Socal, because you can selectively breed for certain tolerances with rootstocks and simply graft just about any variety to that rootstock, and grow it in areas that might be inhospitable otherwise. For example, you might have a rootstock that is tolerant to salt, sandy conditions and nematodes, that would allow a cultivar to grow well in Florida, but that roostock would do poorly in clay soils, so, it would be out for California. But, if you use a rootstock that tolerates wet soils, but perhaps is NOT resistant to nematodes or salt. You could use the second rootstock in California and grow the same citrus. Just gives growers more options across the citrus growing states to grow a wider variety of citrus cultivars. Otherwise, you'd have to develop maybe 3 of 4 different types of the same cultivar, to tolerate different conditions. Same theory for just about any fruit tree.

Patty S.

punky1991 A little more than a year has passed. How is your tree doing