Never Give Up!

As I write this on the 28th of June, it is almost 90 degrees outside. We haven't been below 70, even at night, for well over 6 weeks, and yet, I am dealing with cold damage on one of my citrus trees.
How is this possible?
Good question!
This article is actually going to dove tail from another one I just wrote last month. If you would like to catch up on that first, here is the link: Citrus Pruning
It covers when and how to prune citrus. It also covers what would happen if a branch is damaged from the cold closer to the trunk.
A quick recap: Cold damage on citrus trees can be very deceiving. If the damage is low on the branch, there might be enough energy in it to initiate growth, but, if the damage is not allowing nutrients from the roots, it will be a short lived flush
SO, with that being said, what am I dealing with now? An entire tree!!

This was a Republic of Texas Orange. It had started out with a real nice flush of growth and I though it was going to be fine. It survived the winter of 2013/14, so I had no reason to doubt it survived the 2014/15 winter when I saw all the leaves coming out.
Then......
About a week ago it all started to wilt. With as hot as its been, I figured it just wasn't getting enough water. So I gave it a good soaking. It never even started to perk up. 
I had waited until the new growth looked good before I cut all the dead material off, as you can see in the picture below, it was quite a bit.

I really thought I was in the clear, until the wilting started. So, I went on a search to see what was wrong. I guess I wasn't really paying attention, or I just overlooked it. 

You can probably see the problem better in this picture. Did you notice all the cracks in the trunk, just above where the large branch was cut off? 

That is cold damage. 

Apparently, there was enough stored energy in the tree above that damage to initiate some new spring growth. However, when that energy was used up, it could not receive anymore from the roots. Hence the wilting and death of the leaves.

I pretty much had given up on this tree and was going to toss it, but I have been really busy as of late and hadn't had a chance.

Then, the tree itself showed me that I should never completely give up, at least not right away.

There are a few roots that are growing just above the soil line and lo and behold, this showed up:

If this was a grafted tree, I would not be as excited. That would just be the rootstock coming back and depending on what it was, might not be worth keeping. This tree is growing on it's own roots, so this is the Republic of Texas coming back!!

It will be a few years before I see fruit again, but as Dr. Frankenstein once said, "IT IS ALIVE!!"

Everything eventually will die for one reason or another, that is a fact of life. If you get nothing else from this article, remember this, when one of your plants look dead, look at all of the factors of what may have killed it, it might be reversible, or it might be salvageable. The truth is, Never Give Up, until it is an absolute surety of its demise!!

If you have any questions about this, any of my other articles or something else pertaining to gardening, please feel free to e-mail me. I can also be found on Facebook as The Citrus Guy.

Happy Growing!

Darren 

Citrus Pruning in mid Spring

To say the past two winters have been rough is probably an understatement! Many citrus trees took a pretty good hit and some have not survived, though many more have. Is this reason to want to quit trying to grow citrus? Absolutely not!!
While there has been some major losses of entire trees, I have been getting reports of trees that were thought to be dead, coming back. Hence the topic for today's discussion, pruning.
I get asked very often, when is the best time to prune my citrus tree? My usual response is, why do you want/need to prune it? There is always a myriad of reasons, many of which are not good reasons, "aren't I suppose to", "I saw online that it has to be done", "my neighbor did it". Then there is the little more reasonable "it is in my way" or "I don't like the way it looks".
This is a case of where you should research the plant before putting it in the ground. In the last two cases, moving the tree or pruning might be your only course of action. We can go into a huge, long discussion about this.
However, like I said at the beginning, there have been some rough winters and some folks trees were getting ready to be kindling, but lo and behold, they have sprouted new growth. What should I do now?
Do you have a tree that looks like this:

 This is also the reason that I usually tell people to hold off pruning any cold damage until you are sure what is truly dead.
Here is another picture of the same tree:

If you would have seen this tree just a few weeks ago, you would have written it off for dead. I had a hunch it would be fine, the cambium layer, just under the bark, was still green in places. Do you see now why I say hold off?

If I had just started cutting away, I might have cut off some new growth. Cold damage on citrus trees can be very deceiving. If the damage is low on the branch, there might be enough energy in it to initiate growth, but, if the damage is not allowing nutrients from the roots, it will be a short lived flush. Waiting until mid Spring gives you a better idea of where you stand. When you are pretty sure you can start cutting, prune small sections at a time, just getting to some green, living material, then stop. You don't want to cut too much off, but you also want to make sure you get all the dead wood off.
I wanted to also share something else that, because I did not prune when it was damaged, is showing some good signs.

This is my variegated Calamondin. The winter of 2013/14 almost killed it. It had dropped every leaf and was nothing but a couple of sticks. I watered it and just let it be, this year it is going to produce fruit again.
There is no real manual for pruning citrus, you need to remember that, if you start cutting citrus trees, you will be cutting flowers and fruit off.
I wanted to end this discussion today with some encouragement for those of you struggling with your trees. As you may or may not know, I grow all mine in pots. I do protect some of them over the winter, but not all. This is just a few of my trees that are bearing fruit this year:

Seedless Kishu Mandarin

Harvey Lemon

Buddhas Hand, Fruit and Flower

Variegated Valencia Orange

Poncirus trifoliata 'Flying Dragon' (Rootstock Citrus)

As always, if you have any questions about this or any of my other articles, feel free to ask. My address is TheCitrusGuy@netzero.com
Happy Growing!
Darren