Colorado citrus: The temperature today is 10F, and tonight it will get down to 7 - 12F below zero. At the moment the wind is blowing at 35 - 40 MPH and snowing sideways, what probably fell from the clouds above Citrus Joe's house, 70 miles north of me, is landing at mine - LOL. After making my way to the greenhouse this morning, I transplanted a two year old CaraCara from a 7 gallon container into the ground (raised bed). I now have two citrus growing in the ground, a Marisol Clementine and the CaraCara. All the other citrus (50) are still in containers. Both the Marisol and the Cara should grow up to be good sized trees. - Millet

Hi Millet,

Just curious, what is the growing medium in the raised bed? Could you describe any differences in the culture of these trees?

SB (whose GH has lots of raised beds, none of which contains any citrus)

Hi Stressbaby, I filled the raised beds with what I had available. The raised beds are filled with four ingredients. 1-part soil, 1-part peat moss, 1-part sand and 1-part leaf mold, this medium drains very well. The size of citrus trees grown in containers are naturally curtailed due to the area available for root growth. My raised beds are 3.5 feet wide and 12 feet long. So the two trees planted in the ground (raised beds) should grow up to be mostly full size citrus. The two trees are in different raised beds. There is 13 feet inbetween each tree. Culture will be mostly the same as container grown trees. The fertilizer applications will be made four times a year as per recomendation according to the size of the tree for trees grown in the ground. I'm folling the instrustions in the book "Citrus Growing In Florida" by Jackson & Davies. I purchased the book from Florida Southern College bookstore, Lakeland, Florida. - MIllet

Millet- What size of bed would you recommend for an individual tree ? I've got a few that I wanna put in the ground, and I just wanna be sure to protect them from sloped water in the winter...I was thinking a 3 to 3.5 ft square ? and 1-2 ft deep ? Please advise. Thanks, EZ

EZ, why don't you make it square (3.5 X 3.5), or better yet 4X4? Lisa (gcmastifs) who lives in Florida plants her trees in wiskey barrels that the bottoms have been removed, which would makes a rather nice looking raised bed for a tree. Her citrus trees then grow through the whiskey barrel and into the soil below. She does this because of the high soil water level in the area, and this keeps her citrus roots healthy. - Millet

I'll go home today and look at that, as I have a few 1/2 barrels to do this. At first blush, I'm left with the impression of putting a dwarf orange tree into one of these..then the tree grows to 10-12 feet tall and wide...Then comes the big wind, and blows the whole thing over....Maybe the barrel is wider than I'm remembering...I know that it is about 2-3 feet deep though..Do you think I need that much above the soil, or can I get away with more like 1.5 to 2 feet above ??

Thanks for pointing me to Lisa..I've got an email to her also !!