My Edible Fruit Trees: Citrus Trees QLD

Finger Lime (Grafted)

Comments: - Trying out a new crop and looking at a niche market

Planted: 2019

Growing: In the Ground

Qty: 2

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Water Given in: Spring

Question: Any tips on growing finger limes in blacksoil in south east Qld? Particularly what is the best fertilizer.

Lime - Tahitian (Grafted)

Comments: - Trying out a new crop and looking for niche market

Growing: In the Ground

Qty: 1

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Water Given in: Spring

Question: Any tips on growing tahitian limes in blacksoil in south east Qld - also what's the best fertilizer.

Lime - West Indian Seedling (Seedling) ^8/10

Comments: - Taste is tangy and smaller than tahitian. First couple of years it focused on establishing itself (bushiness) then by 4th year height has taken effect and getting only a small amount of crop and flowering. There are thorns. Espaliered, but not as easy to compared to my other citrus as branches are stiffer.

Planted: 2013

Height 2 metres

Growing: In the Ground

First Fruited: 3 Years from purchase in pot

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Water Given in: Winter

Pollination: Self Pollination

Organic Status:Certified

Dwarf Orange - Valencia Seedless (Grafted) ^9/10

Comments: - Espaliered, holds fruit for long period

Fruiting Months September, October, November, December

Planted: 2013

Height 2.5 metres

Growing: In the Ground

First Fruited: 1 Years from purchase in pot

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Water Given in: Winter

Pollination: Self Pollination

Organic Status:Certified

Dwarf Mandarin - Imperial ^9/10

Comments: - Espaliered. Did not fruit until 3rd year of planting (I assume it was establishing itself). One dwarf is not enough in long run if there are two or more people in household who like mandarins. Have heard it can produce lower harvest bi-yearly but not seen that happen yet.

Fruiting Months April, May, June

Height 3 metres

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Water Given in: Winter

Pollination: Self Pollination

Organic Status:Certified

Dwarf Lemon - Eureka (Grafted) ^9/10

Comments: - Espaliered. I like this more than the meyer as more like your tradional lemon. Not as bushy as other citrus (more strangly). Fruits throughout the year with a break in hottest part of summer.

Fruiting Months March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November

Height 2 metres

Growing: In the Ground

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Water Given in: Winter

Pollination: Self Pollination

Organic Status:Certified

Mandarin - Hickson (Grafted)

Comments: - Wait and see, clay soil may have slowed down growth, however the plums are liking it.

Planted: 2016

Height 1 metres

Growing: In the Ground

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Water Given in: Winter

Pollination: Self Pollination

Dwarf Mandarin - Emperor

Comments: - Wait and see, still not grown a lot when plums are fine.

Planted: 2015

Height 1 metres

Growing: In the Ground

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Water Given in: Spring

Pollination: Self Pollination

Dwarf Kumquat - Nagami (Grafted) ^9/10

Comments: - Nice fruit to eat off tree if you can tolerate the tanginess (50/50 with my visitors). I puree and freeze to use later in citrus desserts. Useful tree, colleague made me a jam from my fruit - I liked it!

Planted: 2013

Height 3 metres

Growing: In the Ground

Fruit Harvest: 5 kilograms per Year

First Fruited: 1 Years from purchase in pot

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Water Given in: Winter

Pollination: Self Pollination

Dwarf Orange - Cara Cara (Grafted) ^6/10

Growing: In a Pot

Sun/Shade: Medium Sun

Orange - Lanes Late (Grafted) ^6/10

Growing: In a Pot

Sun/Shade: Medium Sun

Orange - Washington Navel (Grafted) ^5/10

Growing: In a Pot

Qty: 1

Sun/Shade: Medium Sun

Organic Status:Organic

Dwarf Lime - Tahitian (Grafted)

Planted: 2016

Growing: In a Pot

Sun/Shade: Full Shade

Lemonade Tree (Grafted)

Comments: -

Update: 09-Dec-2011: Produced a lot of flowers but only got one fruit out of them. Its still not mature enough to be harvested. Time will tell if i finally get to taste a lemonade or not. New pic attached.

Never tasted lemonade fruit before. But i believe it tastes like sweet lime. Have a few tiny little fruits on it at the moment. Lets see how many mature ones i get.

Fruiting Months September and October

Height 1.5 metres

Growing: In the Ground

First Fruited: 1 Years from purchase in pot

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Pollination: No

Blood Orange

Comments: -

Update 09-Dec-2011: Most of the tiny fruits have been nibbled by some insects. New pic attached.

Got a couple of fruits last season. The fruits were already forming when we got this from a nursery. But those fruits didnt have the blood red colour in the flesh that i was expecting. It was moderately sweet.

Its flowering again and i hope to get some blood oranges this time.

Planted: 2010

Height 1 metres

Growing: In the Ground

Sun/Shade: Medium Sun

Pollination: No

Lime - Makrut (Kaffir) (Cutting) ^8/10

Comments: -

Update 09-Dec-2011: Got a few fruits. Not quite sure what to do with them. They are very fragrant. Will use them in Thai preparations. New pic attached.

We use it for making Thai preparations. It has just recently flowered and is now forming fruits.

Planted: 2010

Height 1.2 metres

Growing: In the Ground

First Fruited: 1 Years from purchase in pot

Sun/Shade: Medium Sun

Water Given in: Spring

Pollination: No

Finger Lime (Seedling)

Comments: - Have several, some in pots, some in the ground. Must not be allowed to dry out in pots, otherwise they die..Seem to need some shade and regulat watering for fruit set.

Planted: 2008

Height 1.5 metres

Growing: In the Ground

Qty: 3

Sun/Shade: Medium Sun

Water Given in: Spring

Pollination: Self Pollination

Fertiliser or Organics Used: citrus

Pest Control: Pick off caterpillars

Comments

Boo hoo... read about drying out far too late ish. This year 2016-17 heat is up. Temperate=SubT. Sun=half shade?

Joppa orange (Grafted)

Comments: - Excellent annual harvest of juicing oranges.

Fruiting Months June, July, August, September, October

Planted: 2001

Height 4 metres

Growing: In the Ground

Qty: 1

Fruit Harvest: 40 kilograms per Year

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Pruned By: 15% in

Pollination: Self Pollination

When I Fertilise: Winter and Spring

Pest Control: Organic%uFFFDWhite oil substitute.  Biggest pest is white citrus  louse which is present  on all our citrus except the citron and the  mandarin.

Lemon - Lisbon (Grafted) ^4/10

Comments: - Annual prune.  Vigorous growth with water shoots after rain. Very thorny, few fruits. Prone to white citrus louse, leaf miner, and citrus shield bugs. Have grafted Myer lemon, Citron, Buddhas Hand Citron, Villa Franca lemon on. Has produced Myer and Buddhas hand citron fruit. Has not fruited very well, limited pruing this year seems to have produced more (Lisbon) fruit.

Fruiting Months April, May, June

Planted: 2001

Height 5 metres

Growing: In the Ground

Qty: 1

Fruit Harvest: 2 kilograms per Year

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Water Given in: Autumn

Pruned By: 20% in Summer

Pollination: Self Pollination

Fertiliser or Organics Used: Poultry manure, kelp spray

When I Fertilise: Winter and Spring

Pest Control:  Myer graft prone to scale. LIsbon aslo suffers from leaf miner. Nature oil. 

Organic Status:Organic

Dwarf Lemonade (Grafted)

Comments: - Slow growth at first, straggly, fruit turns to orange when ripe but can be eaten green skinned. Closer in flavour to orange than lemon when orange skinned. Straggly untidy tree, probably due to the dwarfing stock. Prone to some kind of brown rust which dessicates the skin, Fuit becomes dry.

Fruiting Months January, February, September, October, November, December

Height 1 metres

Growing: In the Ground

Qty: 1

Fruit Harvest: 3 kilograms per Year

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Water Given in: Spring

Pruned By: 10% in Spring

Pollination: Self Pollination

Fertiliser or Organics Used: Citrus

When I Fertilise: Winter and Spring

Pest Control: Organic oil for leaf miner. Heavy infestation of cottony cushion scale 2012, used Confidore without much success.  Now trying high pressure water, seems to work better.

Organic Status:Pesticides Used

Lime - Makrut (Kaffir) (Grafted) ^6/10

Comments: - Makrut lime. Regular feed and water. Fruit always drops.  Appears to be a poor scion selection, growth very irregular. In a pot, flowers but never sets fruit.

Fruiting Months August, September, October, November, December

Height 1 metres

Growing: In a Pot

Qty: 1

Sun/Shade: Medium Sun

Pruned By: 10% in

Pollination: Self Pollination

When I Fertilise: Winter and Spring

Pest Control: organic oil for citrus leaf miner, lime spray for white citrus louse 

Dwarf Pummelo Nam Roi (Grafted) ^7/10

Comments: - Variety unknown, lost cultural notes.  Small fruit but very juicy, and a lot sweeter than a grapefruit.  Not what I would call a dwarf, but I suppose it would probably have been a lot bigger from seed.  Good fruit but gets attacked by fruit fly.

Planted: 2004

Height 5 metres

Growing: In the Ground

Qty: 1

First Fruited: 3 Years from purchase in pot

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Water Given in: Autumn

Pruned By: 15% in Summer

Pollination: Self Pollination

When I Fertilise: Winter and Spring

Pest Control: Oranic oil for leaf miner, lime spray for white citrus louse.

Pummelo ^5/10

Height 3 metres

Growing: In the Ground

Qty: 1

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Orange - Washington Navel ^5/10

Growing: In the Ground

Qty: 2

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Mandarin - Imperial ^5/10

Height 1 metres

Growing: In the Ground

Qty: 2

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Lemon ^5/10

Planted: 2018

Height 1 metres

Growing: In the Ground

Qty: 1

Sun/Shade: Full Sun

Mandarin - Imperial (Grafted) ^9/10

Comments: -

Easily the most successfull tree. It fruits for months and months with more fruit then you can eat. The taste is great but there are quite a few seds.

Fruiting Months May, June, July

Planted: 2002

Height 5 metres

Growing: In the Ground

Qty: 1

Fruit Harvest: 20 kilograms per Year

First Fruited: 3 Years from purchase in pot

Sun/Shade: Medium Sun

Water Given in: Autumn

Pruned By: 40% in Summer

Pollination: No

When I Fertilise: When Fruiting

Pest Control:

We do get lots of aphids on it and I tried white oil however the tree is just so big there is enough leaves for the aphids and the tree to survive.

Organic Status:Partially Organic

Comments

Wow Correy, how encouraging. It's great to see you have an Edibles page too!

Bush Lemon Tree (Seedling) ^1/10

Comments: -

Tried but DIED.

I still don't know what happened to my wee bahbee Bush Lemon. After my disappointment in my Finger Lime, a friend told me I had tried the wrong native citrus, and Bush Lemon was the way to go- like a normal lemon, but hardier in our heat.

It struggled from day one, and hated every single spot I put it in. Hated full sun, hated part sun, hated shade. Hated lots of water, hated barely moist, hated dry. Damn thing lasted a few months as a sickly looking thing, and then as soon as summer rolled around it just... died? Straight to dropping every leaf and becoming a dead stick.

I've since planted a few natives into the garden, and having learnt what I have about our natives and their soil needs, I'm actually wondering if my soil was too rich. I'd really like to try Bush Lemon again, but perhaps in the ground, and with minimal soil amendments. Maybe some more research is required?

Made me sad to lose this one. I plan to try again some day.

Growing: In a Pot

Qty: 1

Sun/Shade: Medium Sun

Pollination: No

Finger Lime - Red Cutting (Grafted) ^9/10

Comments: -

2018: I bloody hate this thing, and if it wasn't a gift with a story, I would let the bloody thing die.

I was told this was the citrus to grow in Australia, as it is hardier than most introduced species and likes our heat better, and to that, I call horse sh*t. This thing is the fussiest, sulkiest, most ridiculous WASTE OF TIME of a tree.

It becomes infested with aphids or mites at the blink of an eye, collapses at the very first sign of heat, and is very prone to root rot in winter (root rot in Brisbane- what?). It dies right back through summer, then starts to grow in Autumn, will be coming along nicely, and then BAM, root rot. I've started to get the feel for when to stop watering it, but ugh, it's a stupid fussy thing that I would dearly like to take the choppers to. 

Never had fruit, it's a pitiful little thing that never gets any bigger, even in my most shaded spot (only 5 hours sun a day in summer!), with the pot itself protected from direct light, thick mulch, good soil, a nice bucket of water- it HATES Brisbane heat. It is most definitely a rainforest understory tree from NSW. My dry humidity is no good.

It does, however, like to be underplanted, and that does help with keeping the surrounding soil moist and free of ants, and stops its roots rotting- the other plants suck up the moisture, I suppose.

The only reason I have persisted with this stupid thing is that the thorny bush sits in front of an unused sliding door, and to move it means risking the massive thorns. I've never been scratched, but every single tradie that has come to do things at our house has been scratched like crazy, so I call it my living security screen. 

2016: Mine is on a rootstock Cox. Recieved as a gift Christmas 2015, didn't repot until January 2016. Seemed fine sitting in the pot it came in, but absolutely exploded with growth once I got it into the new pot- which I am still not sure if that was the size of the container it is now in (70 L) or what it was potted into. I used cheapy bunnings compost, cow poo, a block of coir soaked in seasol and mollasses, a hand full of dynamic lifter, and a smidge of lime. I'm told they don't like very rich soil, but mine has thrived in the mix.

Another thing I have found is that despite everything saying full sun for these guys, mine did NOT like the full sun in my hot, concreted suburban backyard. Instead, I have moved it to a spot that only gets perhaps two to three hours of morning summer sun before it is in shade by 11, and it did a whole lot better there. The sun was scorching the new growth right off, and the leaves were all turning yellow. It is happy and bushy now in more shade, even with very little sun in the midst of winter at the moment. I have it underplanted with an english spinach plant, bok choy, a whole whack of johnny jump-ups, and a succulent as living mulch, and there is a butter bean vine planted in the back of the pot, and it seems to tolerate living with these really well. There is a Salvia in there as well, but it is not doing great in so much shade, so I shall be digging that out soon.

It IS a very spiky plant, though I have never been scratched by it. A little care is needed, but my kids know to be careful, and nobody has been bitten yet!! I have it placed by my front gate, in front of my glass sliding door. We don't use the door as a door, so it is a good security measure, lols.

My biggest problem with the Finger Lime has been ants and APHIDS. The ants persist in wanting to nest underneath the Finger Lime, so I have to flood the pot every few weeks to drive them out again. This has become less of an issue since I underplanted the tree with flowers, etc, as I think the additional root systems around the edge of the pot are keeping the soil more moist than they like. I shall see how this progresses. But they do herd the bloody APHIDS around the tree. Despite wanting to keep my yard as chemical free as possible, I have had to resort to chem aids to rid my poor Lime of the aphids. They tuck into the delicate new growth where I cannot reach them, and so I have had to spray every two-three days for the last four weeks to rid myself of them. The ants will herd them to unsprayed foliage, as well, so you must spray the entire plant if you have aphids, or they will simply reappear elsewhere a few days later. Very annoying.

I was told that I would not get fruit until the tree was at LEAST three years old, but many others seem to have fruit much earlier than that, so I shall see this summer, I suppose.

Planted: 2016

Height 1.5 metres

Growing: In a Pot

Sun/Shade: Low Sun

Water Given in: Spring

When I Fertilise: Spring

Dwarf Lemon - Meyer (Seedling) ^8/10

Comments: -

Mine is the 'Lots of Lemons', which I believe is a Meyer variety. Not grafted.

This, with my Tahitan Lime, were Christmas gifts 2014. These poor citrus. Goodness me, they have been through a lot.

For some reason that escapes me, I repotted the Lime, and not the Lemon, and it sat in it's original 25L pot for months in my yard- poor thing. I know I fertilised it, but it never occured to me to repot it. It set flowers the first month, and I had one fruit come in nicely (the possums ate the other flowers and have since not touched them. They prefer everything else in my yard) and then three more fruit a month or two later. I hadn't been told yet to pinch out the fruit the first year to help promote growth of the tree, so I let the fruit grow.

The first lemon was delicious. I have never had such a lovely lemon. You could smell them a few metres away while they were on the tree! Lovely! Seven months for the fruit to be ready, but it was delicious!

Sadly, hubby had borrowed one of my hoses for something, and when he replaced them, the sprinkler was moved, and I wasn't aware. So when I was setting the timer on the sprinklers every morning before running off to school, I never noticed that the lemon was now not getting even a speck of the water, and in the heat we had, it dropped all the developing fruit before I had caught on. It looked dreadful, and I pruned it and moved it, and watered it.

And then had aphids, citrus gall wasp, giant brown caterpillars, leaf miner, and citrus swallowtail catterpillars absolutely decimate the poor thing. Fruit flies everywhere! They were breeding in the soil beneath the tree, even!

I should have just let it die, but I didn't. It went into a huge pot with chook poo and compost and coir soaked in mollasses and seasol, some dynamic lifter pellets and some blood and bone, and some lime. I trimmed off all the galls and anything really dead, and underplanted it with garlic, garlic chives, and marigolds. It has a few lettuce seedlings, and even a few carrots towards the edges now. At first it looked woeful, a stick about 30cm tall with a few leaves on. But it has put on so much new growth since, and in the last six months has reached a half a metre, not much, but more wide than tall now, and very bushy and glossy. No more pests, and it looks healthy. We shall see. 

Mid winter 2016 now, and it looks lovely, even though it gets very little sun with the stupid weather we are having. Everything in the pot is doing well, and I occasionally throw on a few dynamic lifter pellets, and a cupful of fishy pond water or two. I will be guarding against the pests with great prejudice this year, and setting yellow sticky traps to catch as much as possible. This tree will live, so help me it will!

Height 0.5 metres

Growing: In a Pot

First Fruited: 1 Months from Purchase in Pot

Sun/Shade: Medium Sun

Water Given in: Spring