How to grow an orange tree?

Help please.... A very random question but as our gardening skills are rather limited, we would like to know how easy it is to grow and sustain a small orange tree in our garden. Thanks Maggie.

Buy it plant it water and feed it simples.

siestasunbeds wrote:Help please.... A very random question but as our gardening skills are rather limited, we would like to know how easy it is to grow and sustain a small orange tree in our garden. Thanks Maggie.

Hi Maggie,

Scubydoo is right, plants grow extremely easy here in Spain, In fact care has to be taken choosing the type and size of plants for that very reason - We have taken out plants like Bougainvillea, as beautiful as they are, because they have grown so rampant and need so much regular maintenance cutting back.

An orange tree should be easy - Literally just plant it in the ground and leave it. We have a lemon tree, our neighbour has an orange tree, and they have masses of fruit and just need a bit of pruning to keep in shape and size as they grow.

We don't have a watering system and are only in Spain about 3 months a year but the plants and the lemon tree all survive perfectly well.

I personally would not have things like palm trees or palm plants - We see them being taken out so often and it's a lot of work maintaining them as they get big so quick.


Just ask on the forum if you need any more help choosing a plant as most people will have made one or two mistakes, like we have, and can save you possibly making one too.

Jan

Thanks to both of you.Will definitely go for that next time we are over.This really has to be one of the most useful forums I have used.Everybody is so polite and helpful on here.... One of the reasons why we bought our holiday home in Lo crispin so how supportive and friendly all the locals are out there. We enjoyed our walk into Quesada last week meeting lots of new people. Sadly UK school holidays just don't come around quickly enough.


Maggie.

I wish you luck with the tree, we have owned our holiday home for 8 years and never managed to get an orange or lemon to grow. We just planted number 6 this month. I think we must over water or not enough, or the soil is not good in our garden as they just seem to die. some near us do well so I am sure if you are lucky you will have a great result. One of the great things about s place in spain is having trees that dont grow in UK
WE have a mature olive ( €350 euros!) and peach that are both doing really well. just unlucky with citrus.

We have four orange trees and have a irrigation system we were having horrendous water bills for over 350 euros, we were told the only trees that need watering are the orange trees four of them, we have turned the irrigation of and thought you can buy oranges so cheap that it is worth risking losing them for the price of irrigation.

As we dont have any garden as such how well would a lemon tree do in a large pot?

Lemon tree in pot ours died the pot was never big enough.

For a citrus tree to survive in a pot, the pot would have to be massive - which would mean it would be pretty much immovable.

I have managed to grow both Mandarinas and a lovely pink grapefruit tree. Both provide tons of fruit. I did have one Naranjo that just refuses to grow, it has never died, just won't grow. I can only guess that the roots don't like the soil..