From top left: Cold tolerant lemons in Murree; Kumquats; Orange formation.—Photos by the writer
Despite countless claims to the contrary, citrus trees are surprisingly simple to grow in most areas of our environmentally diverse country and if you begin before the month is over, there is still time to add locally suitable citrus to your garden before temperatures begin to climb.
Citrus, of all varieties, thrive in fertile soil which must be well-drained. They hate having their roots wet for long and over-watering/bad drainage can kill them. If they manage to survive, it will cause so many diseases and other problems that the trees will be in extremely poor health with negligible fruiting potential.
Planting them on a sunny slope is the easiest way to ensure that drainage is good but as few people have this luxury in their gardens, here are some alternative suggestions.
Construct raised beds
Select a sunny spot, work out what size of raised bed it can accommodate and enclose it with a retaining wall six to 12 inches high. This wall can be constructed out of bricks /blocks, planks or recycled materials. There is no need to dig up the base earth inside the bed but do remove any perennial weeds.
Your Vitamin C supply can come straight from your garden
Fill the area with a mix of 50 percent sweet earth, 25 percent old, well-rotted, organic manure or homemade organic compost and 25 percent river sand. Saline sea sand must not be used as citrus will not tolerate it.
Once filled to the brim, lightly water the soil mix, leave it to settle for a few days, top up and repeat as required until the final layer is approximately one inch below the top of the retaining wall. Prepare planting holes — the depth and distance apart varying according to citrus species chosen and size of the sapling — and pile the soil mix carefully to one side.
In the base of the hole place a handful of iron (not stainless steel) nails and a sizable piece of totally clean beef bone — a boiled and scraped knuckle-bone is best. Cover these with two to four inches of the extracted soil and plant
your tree on this, filling with previously extracted soil mix.
Container cultivation
Medium-sized and bush varieties of citrus respond well to container cultivation. Use very large clay pots with large drainage holes. Use the soil mix specified above and plant using the instructions given below.