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This fall I went from a 15gallon to a 25 gallon which sits in a 2” saucer that I don’t empty? And overflows when I water weekly.. Right now the tree has 20 fruit forming and is about to reflower like crazy. I only disturbed the outer 1” of the roots when I repotted. My soil temps are always >65f, air temps may dip down to 50 and I put a a bunch of cedar mulch in the bottom of the pot so the substrate won’t rot when sitting in water.
I think soil temps are super important for container plants. I used to water with cool water in the winter 50F, and most of my plants suffered, mango and citrus really bad. Things seem much happier now the water is 80-85F.
If you are pushing things on cold hardiness and are expecting a catastrophic freeze, temporarily mulching several feet deep around each tree can be a huge help. I have seen people get bananas to fruit in the Charleston, SC area with that trick. They built a cage with wire fencing several feet in diameter around the plant and mulched a foot above where the leaves come out of the trunk. That way only the top of plants gets frozen back. Lift the cage and spread the mulch after the immediate danger is past. Trees will die if buried for weeks, so cages have to be removed. It would be a fair amount of work doing this 10 times a Winter, once or twice is well worth it to save the plant. Foam pipe insulation around smaller scaffold limbs can help too if the trees are still small. Pruning back to main scaffolds just before the freeze might help too.
If you had a rural property with a tractor and loader, you could bury trees to save grafts and main scaffolds and dig them out carefully after the freeze.
Get a couple big bales of hay or a pile of wood chips to keep on hand during the winter months, it probably would have saved all the trees lost in New Orleans. A big enough pile of wood chips that has been sitting a while and kick started with some compost starter and water will actually generate its own heat from starting to decompose. If the warm pile is a few feet from the trees, that can help too... Carambola/Starfruit would seem a good candidate for zone pushing since the tree fruits heavily at a small size. Bell is my favorite variety. You might need to bury the whole tree with mulch during freezes for a winter crop of fruit though.
These tips might make a difference of a few degrees to hopefully save some trees... Same basic principles people use to protect tea roses and small ornamentals in REALLY cold areas....
For me in Australia it's Spring (We've already hit 30C) and the weather is great.
For you in the states, today starts Autumn, and I'm not sure about you local conditions, but I reckon you would get your first frost in approx. a month and a half, but I could be a bit off. I wouldn't do tipping of trees yet, I would wait until Spring (Or when you are certain that the last frost has passed).
Cheers.
I would recommend eureka or lisbon lemons over meyer. I would most likely not have a meyer lemon tree if I was able to grow standard lemon varieties in my climate. Meyer lemons to me have an off taste. Meyer is a highly productive tree if you like the fruit but I prefer other lemon varieties over meyer.
The citrus in 2" pots I have bought from Logee's have been severely root bound. I had to remove all soil from the root balls and cut away large circling or "J" shaped roots. I had to do that to two Turunji's I bought from them and both now have yellow leaves, which I believe is due to root problems.
