Laura,

Thank you for your input :) Hoping other experts will tell me that they're ok regardless of how much heat/light they get, and I can keep them where they are... in a season-less room. :) Thanks again.

Nancy

I have never had success in the Northeast/MidAtlantic with Citrus indoors..., never.

They only thrived once I left them either outdoors in my growing season (late March to early November in Zone 7), then into a cool/cold, frost free garage for the winter. They are extremely vulnerable to insect damage in the warm indoors. Amazingly, i have only lost Citrus due to pests in NJ under warm indoor conditions..., never to cold from being locked out of the house.

Do you use a fan and can you crack a window to bring in fresh air? Do you have enough T5 HO bulbs to provide enough light? I grow tropical plants and orchids in my basement in a room about that size under lights during the winter and they do fine. I have grown citrus in there in the past when they were seedling sized trees but now they are a growing in my greenhouse. They grew fine there but now are much larger. You say your citrus look good so far so they must like their indoor environment. Why do you want to lower the temperature and light? When the lights are off during the night, doesn't the temperature drop? Many plants need a 15-20 degree drop in temperature at night to initiate buds and flower spikes. I am not sure how much the various citrus require. Many citrus that grow in warm/hot climates, their fruit stay green even though they are ripe. They still produce fruit though. If you say yours are doing well, I wouldn't change anything. Do they produce fruit? Do you have any insect problems with the warm temperature? Do you run a humidifier to compensate for dry air from the lights and high indoor temperature?

Cory

Hi Cory and thanks for your reply. I guess I can say yes to all your questions. So.....

yes to having enough light- I have seven 4 foot 8 tube lights. Each of the seven lights has half 6000K lights and half 3000K lights... so everything gets plenty of light :) And I always have two rotating fans going with a dehumidifier. So the reason I have a DE-humidifier is that without it humidity runs at near 60%. It's being a basement in a climate that never stops with the rain- so even more humid than the usual basement. The earth is always saturated. No pests as yet but I'll get my share of mites etc. soon enough! And yes the temp drops from 86-88* daytime to about 72*.

Everything does look great so far. But the reason I question is that I was brought up on an orange grove ranch in Corona CA. While as kid never paid a lot of attention to the family grove. But the ranch foreman back then said that citrus need the cooler temps, lower light of winter to thrive. Is that true from your experience and others?

If it's not I'll quit worrying about this and just enjoy the beauty of now.

The lower light he mentioned is relative. Referring to the outdoor light at that location.

I would like to find some solid info on what we need for indoor overwintering about the temperature difference needed. Again, I see a lot of info that really refers to outdoor growing.

Even tho you run the fan and dehumidifier, you might want to mist the citrus to keep the mites down.

Oh yes Hibiscus, I mist at least 3 times a day. I also do an application of neem oil every two weeks as a preventative for mites for my plumeria, and add the citrus in there too. Been caring for my plumeria for some time, and the citrus and plumeria seem to have very similar requirements.

Jeez, I said yesterday that my citrus were looking great, and wouldn't you know I found about 8 green leaves dropped on the Satsuma. That'll teach me. I won't say anything about the plumeria now! The Satsuma is in 5-1-1, just watered two days ago when it was semi-dry to my finger, (drains immediately), transplanted 2 weeks ago, roots look great, use 1/2 strength Osmocote, 1/2 strength Foliage Pro and when transplanted put a tiny bit of worm castings. Probably too much change in a short time. I moved it from directly under the T5HO lights to directly under an LED light and next to the T5HO light. Needed the T5HO for my plumeria. May move it back under T5HO. Argghh.

:(

Thanks very much Hibiscus.

Nancy

Hi Petuniafish, I really don't know what to tell you as I am always experimenting myself with light and temperature and watering during winter in a northern climate. I find it hard even in a greenhouse. Each year I think I finally have everything right but it is very hard to keep them all healthy until I can put them outside again in the spring. The last few weeks seem to be the hardest, even with the trees in full bloom and setting fruit. This was a very cloudy winter so light levels were quite low. I keep the greenhouse temperature set to a minimum night temperature of 63°F. The roots should be warm enough to avoid WLD, but I still have it happen with many of my trees, some worse than others. Your cellar temperatures seem quite high and I would think might encourage insect pest problems which I get in the greenhouse at much lower temperatures and higher humidity. Even in the greenhouse I suddenly had leaf drop in late January this year. I thought maybe it was the low light levels. I never had an aphid problem in my greenhouse until this past winter and I have an invasion of them that no matter how often I keep after them I have not been able to get rid of them. I don't find ants either. I have finally resorted to a Bayer Citrus Insect soil drench about 2 weeks ago after removing all fruit and I am still cleaning off living aphids covering the leaves today. Hopefully it will eventually take care of the aphid problem that HO, Neem, soap, alcohol, hand cleanng by leaf, etc could not. They just cover the leaves and really weaken the trees. I can't figure out how they seem resistant to even HO. No scale this year thank goodness, but was plagued by them last year. It seems to always be something affecting our trees. But it is so nice to enjoy the blossom fragrance and pick the fruit. It can be discouraging at times though. I am always searching the net for information but it is very hard to find articles that apply to indoor northern growers. I hope you will continue to have success growing your trees.

Cory

You can't use too much t5ho light. Those fixtures put out 50w a square foot. The sun is double (110w from what I remember at the equator)

Yep, hard to have too much light when you have citrus indoors. Remember that artificial lights suffer from the inverse square law too (and much more so than the sun given their small point-source nature when it comes to indoor growing). Essentially, light intensity is a function of distance from the light itself. If you're curious, check this out.

What does it mean to you? The more, the better!

-Tom

Thanks Cory, Pip and Tom.

I won't worry so much about cutting back a bit on the "pretend winter" light doses that I make for my plants in fall-winter of 2017. Just like anything else I'll go with my plan, see how things go and learn. With my seven T5HO lights, some LED's and CFL's in my 16x16 room the light seems just brilliant- like nuclear fission. The plants are all 6"-12" from the lights so I think they are still pretty light saturated, as far as indoor containers can be. But everything looks great so I won't worry too much.

Thanks for your input.

nancy

Agree, I have all my trees under HO T5s in winter and while they seem to do fine for the most part the trees where I have pointed the extra CFL bulbs do even better- more new growth and better flrowering and vigor. More light is better!