Gardening - Hipster Homesteaders

3 Ways to Check if its Time to Water Your Container Trees

For our tropical fruit trees in pots, getting watering right is critical. Water too much and you may trigger root rot and kill the plant. Water too little and you may lose fruit or, in extreme cases, kill the plant. When in doubt, I'd almost always go too dry as most of our trees can manage that scenario far better than being too wet.

So, that begs the question, when is the right time to water?

Most articles I had read on this topic simply offered a set watering frequency for each specific plant and left it at that. However, general watering intervals are often not good enough due to the many variables that impact our plants. Are your plants indoors or outdoors? Is the humidity high or low? Is it warm or cold? Is the plant big or small? Is it growing vegetatively or producing fruit? All of these can significantly influence how much water they will need.

To get a handle on your trees, you'll need to do some checks!

As a collector of unusual tropical fruit trees, I decided to go on a hunt for some rather unique species that are hard to come by.

This search led me to the company Fast Growing Trees, a large online plant store that had, well, seemingly everything available for purchase.

After placing two orders, with five unique trees and/or cacti, I have to say that I have been quite pleased with the company all around!

Not everything is fun and games when it comes to growing tropical trees.

If you are like us, particularly growing tropical trees in climates they are not suited for (in containers), it is a constant battle to provide the right conditions in the less-than-ideal environment to allow the trees to thrive.

The tree that has been giving us the biggest headaches since acquiring it was none other than our Mauritius lychee tree. This one is particularly sensitive to, well, everything, and we unknowingly overfertilized it when we potted it after purchasing.

The leaves began to dry out, fall off, and we unfortunately became the victims of an untimely tree death.

So in this one, we thought we'd share a bit more about fertilizer burn, what signs we had on our lychee that indicated the problem, and what we tried to turn the tree around despite ultimately losing the tree.

Note: In this article we are addressing fertilizer burn on lychee trees as this was something we personally experienced. However, all plants are susceptible to fertilizer/salt burn in some capacity- lychee is simply more prone to it than most and the one we have personal experience in. So while the solution in this article could apply to other plants, we caution that other issues could be at play here. Likewise, fertilizer burn (and other similar issues) can result in tree death if not rectified in a reasonable period. Had I recognized the issue sooner, we suspect we could've saved our tree. That said, we have to admit that the steps outlined below are never guaranteed for survival. We are simply sharing the process that we followed when we identified fertilizer burn on our own lychee. Proceed with caution.

I have to admit, I have a bit of a problem when it comes to growing tropical fruit trees at home. I just love growing rare and exotic fruit that is either impossible to find fresh at a local store (or that doesn't cost an arm and a leg in the process).

But as I live in a cooler climate, one most certainly not suited for tropical fruit trees (zone 6b/7), growing these trees is also a bit of a challenge that only the most determined gardeners with ideal growing environments should consider.

In this one, we want to go beyond the basics- checking to see if a plant will do well in your growing zone and if it could thrive in a container or not based on your indoor lighting conditions. We hope (and assume) that you have already checked these things. Here, we want to dive into some considerations to think about once you are committed!

These are truly some of the finer points I wish I knew before getting into growing tropical plants at home.

If you live in a cooler climate, as we do in zone 6b/7, odds are good you'll have to bring some container plants inside for winter.

We love growing tropical fruit trees, and, as you can expect, they do not do very well outside when temperatures drop close to freezing (let alone as low as 0 °F that we sometimes see in extreme cases). As such, we bring our plants inside for the winter to help give them an environment that they can tolerate until the following spring when temperatures rise once again.

But there are some things you will likely experience when doing this, and after several seasons with our own citrus trees, we have some thoughts that you should know before heading into winter!

When we bought our Meyer lemon tree, we thought it looked odd. We couldn't quite place our fingers on why, but it amounted to the fact that some leaves and branches seemed different.

One set of leaves had a single lobe, while other sets had three lobes similar to those of a very large clover.

It wasn't until the tree started producing flowers that we realized only specific branches were budding (only the branches with single-lobed leaves), and we investigated further.

As it turns out, we had a huge issue– fruit trees should not have two unique sets of leaves and the rootstock was growing a bit out of control!

I always knew that it'd be a bit of a risk trying to grow a passionfruit vine in a container, but due to our location in the north this tropical plant simply would not have done well in the ground during winter.

The vine was growing quite fine for many months until it started losing leaves at the bottom. The problem got worse and worse and we knew we had to figure out a solution right away. The problem was that any solution we read about could also have been the problem!

So, after testing, we came to a conclusion- we were underwatering. Read more about how we figured this out below.

Note: Please keep in mind that my passionfruit vine is potted and trellised. I bring it inside in the winter as we live in Zone 6b with cold enough winters that would kill the plant. This more than likely influenced the issue that will be described below and may not have the same solution for those growing a plant in the ground.

Although we live in Zone 6b, I knew I always wanted tropical plants that we take in and out of the house seasonally.

For things like fruit trees, this is pretty simple. Plant a dwarf citrus tree in a large enough pot, take it out when the risk of freeze passes, give it a ton of natural light when indoors, and you're (probably) good to go. But what about vines? Many of our favorite tropical fruits, like passion fruit, do not grow on trees but on sprawling vines.

As a passion fruit vine was high on my list of must-haves, we simply found ourselves with an issue of figuring out how to make the sprawling vine work outside of its ideal Zone 9-11. As you may expect, moving a 40+ foot vine in and out as seasons change sounded like a challenge.

Although one answer was simply to acquire native Maypops for planting outside (these are North American passion flowers with cold tolerance down to approximately Zones 6-7 pending varietal), which we also did, I still wanted to have a proper passion fruit all the same.

So in this one, I wanted to share a bit more about how we planted our vine and, more importantly, share a passion fruit trellis idea that really allowed us to maximize our surface area while still being in a container!

When we first purchased citrus trees (such as our key lime, Meyer lemon, and others), one of the first questions we got from other gardeners was simply “you're going to keep them inside?”.

In living in western Pennsylvania, the answer was, of course- it will have to be indoors for half of the year.

The second question that then immediately would follow is “how will the flowers get pollinated?” to which I would reply “by me!” (by hand). After often surprising looks all around I would go on to say that hand-pollinating citrus trees is rather easy because, in all honesty, it is!

So in this one, I thought I would share the simple steps on how to pollinate lemon trees and other citrus trees you may have at home!

We love to garden.

Nothing is more rewarding than going out into your own vegetable patch, picking something ripe, and then immediately cooking with it. From the flavors to the satisfaction that you did it yourself, it really can't be beaten.

But is gardening better than buying produce at the store? Particularly over buying produce from local farmer's markets where the quality would be comparable?

We thought we'd take a look at a cost-benefit analysis for all things gardening to see what the math says. But in this one, we have to look at two kinds of gardening outright- container gardening and in-ground gardening. The math for each is quite different!

Note: This evaluation considers gardening to be for more conventional items like tomatoes, peppers, lettuces, beans, and more. Perennial plants, like berry bushes and citrus trees, are not included in this discussion as, assuming they survive to production age, their payback period typically is the first year or two of a full harvest (generally 3-8 years) as maintenance costs can be quite low. As such, they are excluded from this evaluation.

3 Ways to Check if its Time to Water Your Container Trees

Fast Growing Trees Review – Are The Trees Worth It?

Diagnosing Brown Leaves on Lychee – Fertilizer Burn?

7 Things I Wish I Knew Before Growing Tropical Plants

5 Things to Know Before Bringing Plants Inside for Winter

What to Do When a Fruit Tree Has Two Sets of Leaves

How We Saved a Dying Passionfruit Vine – Container Gardening

How to Grow Passion Fruit in Pots Outside of the Tropics

How to Pollinate a Lemon Tree (and Others) in a Few Simple Steps

How Long Does Gardening Take to Pay Itself Off? It Varies