Citrus > Citrus General Discussion

Mandarins and oranges grafted onto lemon tree, good idea?

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Galatians522:
The old charts put out by UF that I have seen indicate that trees on rough lemon produced a higher volume of fruit, but with approximately 1 degree lower brix (when compared to sour orange or Swingle). I don't recall acids being significantly affected. Varieties with a high sugar content (like Valencia) are fine on lemon stock, but it does not work out as well for low sugar fruit (like Hamlin). While that may not transfer directly to a Meyer Lemon, I think the principle would apply. If you plan to top work, I would stick with the varieties mentioned above that have been tried and worked well.

1rainman:
They don't use lemon root stock because a lemon is weaker than an orange. It is less cold hearty and not any more disease resistant. The weakness might mean a less hearty less sweet tree but it doesn't effect the genetics of the bud wood.


That being said Meyer is not a true lemon and it's cold hearty. I don't see any advantage though vs own roots.

A sour orange is essentially just a wild orange. If you plant a sweet orange seed 90% of the time it will grow a sour orange. But from seed it's larger deeper roots healthier than rooting a graft also more cold hearty. Then trifoliate orange is a lot more cold hearty and so on.

But the main advantage of root stock is not the type but that it was grown from seed and thus tougher. If you root a cutting, Meyer lemon in this case and use it for root stock, why not just root the bud wood you want? Or grow a Meyer lemon seed and use that as a root.

pagnr:
I recently found a fruiting Rough Lemon Rootstock in an abandoned yard.
The lower part of the tree had Navel Oranges growing.
Looks like a rootstock sucker has started to take over.
I ate an Orange, it was a little small and had tight skin.
Not sure of the actual Navel variety, early or late etc.
It is Navel Orange season here now, probably midway in the picking season.
The Orange flavour was quite acceptable, clearly orange.
It definitely tasted of Orange, not Lemon.
However there was a slight sourness at the end.
It wasn't the richest Naval Orange flavour, but it wasn't as bad as old oranges either.
Not sure how much this was due to the rootstock or fruit ripeness or lack of attention. ??
I will grab a few later and see how they improve.

1rainman:
Ok. This is what I was saying. "Sour orange" is just a regular orange grown from seed. In the wild oranges are barely edible- either full of seeds, or sour like a lemon (though you can make orange aide like lemonaid out of them). There just a few selections that are very sweet, which they clone by grafting or by rooting the sticks.

When they use "sour orange" root stock it's just an orange tree grown from seed. Who knows what the parent was. Could be they just grew some navel oranges from seed.

Citrus is usually grafted because even though you can root a cutting, it doesn't grow a tap root. It's going to be a small bush with shallow roots in the top soil. It will be much weaker than a normal tree- less cold resistant, less resistant to drought or disease, it won't live as long though it could survive a really long time like 50 years or something. They are cool if you want a small tree and are willing to water it and take care of it because it won't survive drought or low nurtients, weeds or anything else very well. They are good for container plants.

Even if you graft, let's say a navel orange, onto a navel orange you grew from seed, it's a lot healthier. It will have a deep tap root, have better cold tolerance, better disease resistance. A lot of times they use a dwarf root stock which will grow bigger than a rooted cutting, but smaller than normal, because you don't want a tree too tall to reach the fruit. Or trifoliate orange is extremely cold hardy and disease resistant etc. will transfer some of that to the top of the tree.

If you grow a citrus straight from seed you get a different result yet. You actually get a big shade tree. The fruit will be so high up you won't be able to reach it. The tree is extremely healthy, much more resistant to disease, cold or drought than anything grown from a cutting. But oranges are not true to seed and revert to a wild type, usually various degrees of sour. Though it's possible to get a small percentage that are sweet.

Grapefruit is the best from seed. They come pretty true to seed and taste slightly better because the tree is just bigger and healthier, but the tree is so huge. The other thing, from seed it takes 7 years minimal to bear fruit. Even when the tree is huge it won't bear fruit. If you grow from a cutting they bear fruit immediately. You'll also get larger thorns or other undesirable traits on stuff grown from seed because the main cloned varieties are selected for desirable traits.

You found a "sour orange" root stock that might actually be slightly sweet because the parent was probably a sweet orange.

If you are grafting citrus, it doesn't make much sense to graft onto a rooted cutting, unless you are growing them in containers. The only way to get a strong root system is to grow citrus from seed.

Millet:
Planting sweet orange seeds do  not grow sour orange trees.  Most all sweet orange varieties grow true from seed.

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