I tried searching the forum for the terms "fertiliz + tutorial" and came up empty-handed. Searching the web for when to apply fertilizer to citrus leads to wildly conflicting answers. They can't all be right. I'd like to do it right.

I live in Palo Alto, CA, halfway between San Francisco and San Jose. At ~10 ft above mean sea level and a mile from the Bay, I am in a 'frost trap' where the lows are frequently a few degrees below the forecast low for the area. I think it is safe to call our climate, Mediterranean, perhaps on the cool side.

I'd love to see an expert in this community post a 'sticky tutorial' on the appropriate time(s) to apply fertilizer to citrus. We have citrus 'in the ground, in planters with roots into the ground, and in 'pots.'

Our citrus inventory:

In ground:
Owari Satsuma dwarf
Trovita
Eureka lemon
Meyer Lemon
Seville # 2
Seville # 1
Algerian Tangerine
Moro Blood orange

In planters:
Valencia
Yuzu seedling
Nagami Kumquat

In pot
Valencia

The Valencias are bud grafts I made from scions I took in 2003 from a tree in my son's yard in the Oakland hills. The house was built just after WWII by a Japanese-American family. It is a nice Valencia. It was part of a CRFG citrus grafting class run by Doron Kletter.

Starting in 2007 I began using Joe Real's bark grafting technique:

link

The Eureka and Meyer lemons and the two Seville oranges have the following grafted to them:

Meiwa Kumquat ,Indio Mandarinquat ,Ortanique ,Chironja ,Kinnow Mandarin, (the preceding from a 2007 CRFG green scion exchange) Moro, Algerian, Navel, Bearss Lime, Owari Satsuma, Nagami Kumquat, Yuzu (from our garden and the garden next door) and Bream Tarocco, Smith Red, Dobashi Beni Satsuma, Kawano Wase Satsuma, Miyagawa Satsuma, Okitsu Wase Satsuma, Xie Shan Satsuma (from CCPP budwood ordered in 2010)

We also grow antique apples, pears, quince, and figs.

Thanks,

baumgrenze

I'm not an expert by any stretch, but I don't think you will ever get consensus on this topic. At least not to the degree that you are asking. Ultimately you will have a data matrix consisting of a given fertilizer, your location, soil conditions, time of year, rootstock, and variety of citrus. I wouldn't trust or agree with a one size fits all approach on any of these data points.

Baumgrenze ?
Do you have german roots ?

My father, born in 1911 in Stangenbach/Wüstenrot (known since at least 779 through an entry in the Chronicles of Fulda) arrived as an immigrant to the USA on Labor Day, 1929. Ich bin jah dort tief eingewürtzelt zu meiner Meinung.

In my day, I took great joy in visiting the 'timberline' country of the High Sierra (die Baumgrenze), enjoying what John Muir named "The Range of Light."

John B

Sanguinello wrote:

Baumgrenze ? Do you have german roots ? ;)

I've had great success with Vigoro brand citrus and avocado fertilizer. It's slow release pellets and I toss them around the trees in early February. Good luck!