Hello to you all. I must first say what a wonderful forum this is and I've found nothing quite like it in all of my surfing of the Internet. Ok, I'm a complete beginner here and have last year grown a seed from a bought lemon here in London. It has surprisingly grown a foot in that time and has healthy green leaves on it and has recently developed a couple of thorns too. Enough about that though, my real query is about a Calamondin that I've just bought. I've just been down to the local Garden Centre, if you could call it such. Basically, it's just a plant centre that had one solitary citrus plant looking very miserable. Well...you know, it didn't look that miserable, it was just indoors and I imagined that since a batch of them was bought, this has become the only one left. It was reduced from £15 to £9. I had to have it. It looks like it was probably left indoors the whole time it was there and we're having such a hot and humid summer this year here in the southeast of England that I thought I'd buy it and nurture it because it looked like it needed a good home. It's about a foot in height and very bushy, it has 4 or 5 ripe fruit plus lots of little green fruit just starting to grow on it. It also has a few white flowers though these are in a bud stage and haven't opened fully yet. It also has alot of newly growing leaves all over and so I'd say that it looks very healthy. However, it's in a 4 inch diameter plastic pot and it's about 4 inches deep as well. On the pot it says that it's about 3 years old. It has a root system that is partially visible because it's above the soil line. Now, I've heard that this is no bad thing but I really feel that this plant needs a bigger pot. Ideally, I'd like to give it a ceramic pot, maybe 12 inches in diameter. I've also heard that the depth isn't as important as the width (or so my girlfriend says :-)) Sorry...anyway... What type of soil should I give it? And is this the right time to repot? I've heard of so many disaster stories where people have lost, or struggled to hold on to otherwise perfect citrus plants when they've re-potted them. Fertilizer and other chemicals I'm completely clueless about. I read about a liquid fertilizer - is that all it is - a liquid fertilizer? And other things that say... a 10-20-20 mix. What are the numbers and what are they describing? Any advice at all would be great. Our summers here are getting hotter and hotter and so I'm gonna stick it out in the sun every chance I get. I will also mist it from time to time and will give it a good soaking with water when the first inch or 2 of the soil is arid - but I need to get it into a bigger pot and have at the ready all the necessary ingredients that it's going to need from now on. Thanks in advance for all your help... Morbius
Have a look at my response to the thread new to lemon trees | UBC Botanical Garden Forums. A 4" pot sounds way too small for the size of the tree; ease it out of the pot to see if it's root-bound. If it is, try to gently tease the roots apart before repotting. Pick a pot that is slightly bigger than the size of the root mass. Do not go much bigger as you'll increase the chance for root rot. The numbers of a fertilizer specify the N-P-K (nitrogen/phosphorus/potassium) ratio. I use a 30-10-10 for my trees.
Thanks for the prompt reply Junglekeeper. I've read your response to the previous thread and I'm ready to repot. Should I wait for the soil to be dry before I repot? Should I keep the top of the roots above the soil line? I guess I should get a couple of photos up here to help. What type of soil should I get?
This page contains some of the answers you're looking for. You may also find other pages at that site helpful, in particular the one labelled As Houseplants. I'm not sure about the answer to this one but I prefer to work with something in between dry and wet - I think it's easier to work with the root ball that way. Keep a hand sprayer handy to keep the roots moist if you expect you'll be working with the roots for an extended period of time.
