I completely bare rooted several trees over the winter. I did one 8-10' lemon tree on a weird 60 degree day and then brought it back inside. I was careful to keep the roots moist and the tree in the shade when I was working with it. I was as careful as I could be to leave the roots intact. It had no insect or disease issues, was in a controlled temp environment with windows and appropriate lighting.

The lemon tree was *not* happy. For a few days it was like nothing happened. Then over the course of the winter it almost completely defoliated. I'm talking maybe 15 leaves a day for a few months. It was very scary. When it finally stopped dropping leaves it had about 20 left on the entire tree. It looked ridiculous.

Several months later it is outside and recovering. It is undergoing a flush of growth now and is leafing out. It is in a protected spot and only gets about 6 hours of direct sun. I believe this tree will make it if the cicadas don't kill it.

In short: it has been my experience that completely bare-rooting large citrus trees and putting them into the gritty mix is risky and scary. When I do my next large tree I will do it in sections as Al advised in a thread I once read. It sounded like a bad and time-consuming idea (wouldn't the soils mix together? wouldn't it be a pain in the ass to do a side of regular soil while the other had gritty in it? wouldn't all that gritty come out too and then I have to do the whole thing 3 times!?) - I should have done what he said and the tree would be much happier now.

Meyer_mike and others all seem to have done this without problem. My trees almost always express unhappiness (the smaller flying dragon rootstock trees handled it much better than the own-root large trees). But I was scared to death of the leaf drop I saw from every tree. I haven't lost one yet though.

I forgot one thing: it has also been my experience that own-root large trees in gritty mix will need to be watered at *least* twice a day in the gritty mix when the temperatures are above 90.

The tree I mentioned above that is only getting 6 hours of direct sun is in, I think, a 30-36" pot. I water it in the morning around 8-9am. By about 12pm the new growth is limp and/or wilting on a 90 degree day. A dowel coming out feels dry. I've been having to water it twice a day for the past week or so (we've had no rain, 95+ temps every day, no clouds).

If things stay like this I will likely have to setup some kind of drip system to keep it alive when I can't water it mid-day. Also keep in mind that this is on a tree that is still leafing out - it doesn't even have its full complement of leaves yet. It will require even more watering in the future...

Hey, guys!
I only have experience with one tree - the Moro Blood orange - so my advice is limited.
I re-potted early in the season - April - and left my tree in protected shade for a couple weeks.
It received a couple hours of morning sun. One other key point is that I used a bark-based mix
with uncomposted fir bark, pumice, and perlite. Technically, this is more like a gritty 5-1-1,
and not directly applicable to your situation.

You could lightly mulch (half-inch or less) the top of the mix, which will keep the upper inches
from drying out too quickly. The mulch can be pulled away once the container is full of roots.

Josh

I did end up mulching mine more for decoration than anything else - but it does seem like a good idea to help with those fine surface roots.

Josh what is holding the water in that mix? There is no super-absorbent material ala turface or axis or anything in there? Just the uncomposted bark and Pumice holding water for you? Did you have a ton of really fine bark material? Did the Moro drop any leave/fruit? Did you completely remove *all* old soil or did you leave an inner core in tact? How big was the tree?

Sorry for all the questions but I still have a few trees to do so I'm interested in the details...

No worries, I like the questions! ;-)

When I screened the bark, I collected a good amount of the "fines" - the bark dust that fell
through my 1/16 inch screen. At the end, I added some of these "fines" back into the mix to help
bridge the gaps between particles and retain moisture. The Pumice and the Perlite do hold an
appreciable amount of moisture in the mix, as well.

When I removed the Moro from the container, the sand/peat/woodchip nursery mix completely
fell off the roots. In fact, I had not planned on bare-rooting the tree....but when all the soil
started to go, I realized that I'd better act fast to keep those roots alive.

Amazingly, the Moro didn't drop a single leaf...but it still hasn't fruited a year later.

I'll link to the Thread I put together on the potting: Moro Blood Orange - potting

Josh

Hey everyone!

I kind of do a lot of what Josh does. His practice of re-potting is something I have always practiced myself. I have transplanted just about every citrus tree I have into the gritty mix after I bare-rooted them and they all respond well.

I can tell you that when I know there is going to be very hot days as so, I will either just move them to a shadier spot where they will get dabbled light light under a tree, or I will not let the sun hit the container themselves until the cooler weather moves in. It works like a charm. I have many citrus in the gritty mix that I don't have to water for a couple of days on these extremely hot days.

Josh's suggestion of putting a bit of mulch or bark as an added layer layer on top works like a charm on my plants too that I decide to leave in the sun.

99 degrees tomorrow!:-)

Mike

Thanks fellow citrus friends

so I guess i am just freaking out a bit and shouldnt be that worried. My large meyer has now drop all the fruit it had though :( at least the smaller one is holding on to its so I may get a few for my beers one day.

mike

We do make lots of "work" for ourselves...BUT I LOVE IT !!!
Does anyone remember a book..."Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"???
Well, this is "Zen and the Art of Container Citrus Farming".

htp

AHhh that is a great book! i do all maintinence and work on my race bike! and have been dabbling in the making my own soils! it is truely like meditation for me!

Hello everyone,
Still at it.. my trees stayed out all winter and started with a bang first of spring and have now stopped a bit. All have set fruit. My meyer has a lot of big fruit and was using up water fast even with our bay climate . It was still in its original nursery container which drained fast so I decided to pot up. I used a 5;1;1 mix as the gritty mix is just too heavy when you get up in pot sizes. The root ball of the meyer was very tight. I did not want to totally bare root it as I felt it would disturb the fruit and tree too much so I opened it a bit and washed as much old soil off with water and left the rest and hope the roots will move/grow into the new mix. I have had it in only morning sun for a week now and will move it to the sun now. It has shown no signs of shock and looks healthy. I hope I did the right thing. As for potting up I am still confused as to the many citrus I have seen in big pots here and especially in Italy that stay in the same pot for 20+ years. As my trees get big enough to be potted up to the nice terracotta pots they are now nested in I would like to eventually stop. I will keep you posted.
Mike...have you had any problems with your FP crystalizing in the jugs?
Dave
ps. sorry for posting this in 2 different threads. hope it's ok

@Bigmario I think I answered your post about the large pots in another thread.

@Mksmith & Redshirt: I hope your trees recover.

My experience follows the bell-curve. The largest majority just languish after bare-rooting (not discussing root-pruning here) only drop a few leaves if any, but do not thrive until the next growing season. A minor amount will act like nothing happen and flush out very soon (if appropriate season) and the other end of the spectrum, a minor few will drop many, many leaves and I think it will croak, but it doesn't. It keeps a small set of them and the next growing season does great. It still pains me greatly to watch that happen, though. I'm lucky on my larger trees I've barerooted they were not at the bad end of the curve.

The only healthy tree I've lost prior was when I root-pruned at the same time. I also lost two that were destined to die from frozen roots during winter.

Unfortunately, I have no way of seeing the pattern (yet) as to which will do well or not. I just finished putting a smaller sized 3yr old Kinnow (that had tons of leaves on it) into an 18gal container with gritty mix and I thought it went beautifully. I saw little to no root loss and was quite proud. As of today, it is still on the decline, having lost over half its leaves. I was ticked and saddened at such an unexpected decline. I thought I'd have to come here and say "I lost my first tree doing a repot".

However, semi-good news for me. It turns out the holes in the bottom of my Kinnow container were just slightly too small (used the wrong size drill bit) or the fiberglass insect screen mesh was too fine. A few days ago I was suspicious, b/c the leaves looked exactly like over-watering damage, so I bore it out with larger bit and sure enough, perhaps a pint or two of water came out the bottom. I went around to my other recent repots and found one other with the same problem and same amount of water. That other container was with the 4-1 mix of CHC/peat (recommended by Millet) and it hasn't lost one leaf and looks great (the far end of my bell curve). Interesting...