Quick Tip To Protect Your Citrus From A Freeze

Sherri:

Hi, I am Sherri with HomeShow Garden Pros, and I’m here today to give you a quick tip on helping your citrus survive the winter. Now of course, if your citrus is in a container like this, you would just bring it in. But I have Leo over here with Nature’s Way resources, he’s going to help give us some tips on our planted citrus. So we’re going to pretend that this is planted in the ground and you’re going to show us how to protect this union where it’s grafted this graft union. That’s the important part, correct?

Leo:

Right.

Sherri:

From the winter. So let’s put this on the ground and Leo, will you show us how to protect this?

Leo:

All right. So once you start getting into those colder temperatures below 30, 25 degrees, it’s really, really important to protect it in a good layer of mulch.

Sherri:

Protect this part.

Leo:

Yes. Would help insulate that temperature and protect it from getting too cold.

Sherri:

And what we don’t do most of the time is make tree volcanoes. And this is the exception, is when we have a grafted fruit like this, it’s okay, right, Leo?

Leo:

Yes. For this case we’re fine doing the volcano, but as soon as you get into the temperatures where you don’t need to have it, you definitely want to remove this volcano. So that way the whole stem right here in the trunk of the citrus tree can breathe.

Sherri:

Yeah. And so this mulch actually puts off heat. So that heat is going to protect our graft union here so that whenever winter’s over… And how long would we leave this on?

Leo:

Probably for more likely about two, two and a half months.

Sherri:

So if we get 70, 80 degrees a week after, we could pull it back. But if we’re going to stay in a winter situation, we can leave that on there. But you would just pull this back when we know there’s no more cold weather. And what happened is we protected the graft and the union right here. And then this top part is the desirable fruit. And that’s what we wanted to protect it from, right?

Leo:

Yes.

Sherri:

Okay. So for more great tips like this, join us on HomeShow Garden Pros.