Moving a small orange tree Hello, I live in Saint petersburg Florida, and have several orange trees in my yard and a grapefruit tree. My grandfather used to live in my current house before i lived in it and planted several tree's in inconvinient places (in the middle of the front yard in a line), some were cut down by my parents when i wasnt here, but several stayed and grow ugly brown splotched oranges that are absolutely delicious. One of the poorly placed trees was still in the yard and never grew much though, it is probably about 6 years old and only grew to about 4 feet tall, so my mother came over and started to pull it out of the yard. Trying to save it i dug out around the roots as far as i could and cut as few as i could and worked to intricately dig a hole in the shape of the large roots, and replant it. The spot I chose was between a large flowering tall bush, and a 10 foot tall orange tree, spaced about 9 feet apart, though east to west the placement should be in direct sunlight until about 6 pm. That was about a week ago, and i checked today and the orange tree and flowering bush had grown over it to almost completely block it in oddly enough, in response to my trimming them back i suppose, so i roped the orange tree to pull its branches on that side to the opposite direction, and cut several of the large branches of the bush back, so its in direct sunlight again, but the small orange tree has lost all of its leaves, and only has one tiny yellow/green orange left (it looks very sad). I was wondering if I should prune back the dead branches or something? I have no experience in gardening and just basicaly make it up as i go, so any help is appreciated. Thank's in advance.
Hi, i posted earlier about a orange tree i moved, and since there were no responses I thought that maybe it was too wordy. --- I moved a small orange tree, leaving as much of the root structure intact as i could, to a new location, a bit shadier than the old one. All of it's leaves have fallen off now, and it looks unhealthy. Should I prune back all the dead branches? how far should I? Should i just leave it as it is?
How long ago was the move? Yes, cut the dead branches--leave about 1/4 inch of dead stem. Are you watering it fairly often? A little late to tell you, but you could have helped the tree a couple ways. Before the move, cut the roots at about the distance you plan to when you move--this will force the tree to make new roots about 4 inches before where the roots were cut. Second, trim part of the top to balance the root loss.
Thankyou for the response. I moved it about a week and a half ago and have been watering it every two days, though it rains almost daily here during the summer.
If the move was just a week or so ago, you could still help the tree by removing some of the top-- at least 1/4 to as much as 1/2--then it will be more able to support the existing top and will recover sooner.
