Growing Citrus Trees From Seed: A Guide

Growing Citrus Trees from Seed: A Guide

Posted under the cut, as this guide is long! Pictures will be added later.

Step One - Preparing the Seeds:

Cut two lemons of any variety in half and remove the seeds. Throw away any “flat” seeds, as these are unfertilized and will not grow.

Take the remaining seeds and gently rinse them with water. Then, using several seeds at a time, place them in your mouth and suck away the pulp from the exterior.

Once the pulp has been removed, rinse them again well, and put them to the side.

Take two attached pieces of strong paper towel and thoroughly soak them with water. Bunch them into a ball and squeeze out as much excess water as possible. Then, un-crumple them and lay them as flat as possible.

Take a sandwich or freezer bag (must be able to seal airtight), and place it next to the paper towels. Fold the towels to be just under twice the size of the baggie.

Place the seeds so they are not touching and have a few cm of space around them onto the paper towel, leaving half the towel empty. Then, fold the empty side over-top so that the seeds are sandwiched between two sides of paper towel.

Slide the paper towel into the baggie gently, doing your best to not shift the seeds. As you close the baggie, inhale most of the excess air so that it is sealed almost airtight.

Place the baggie in a warm location, where it will be 24 c or 75 f degrees or higher.

Check once a week for signs of mold. If mold appears, place clean seeds (do not keep the moldy ones) onto freshly prepared paper towel (same process as above) and into a new baggie.

Once the seeds have sprouted at least 1.5″ of root, they are ready to plant.

Step Two - Planting Seedling

Your seedlings should be planted 1″ deep root side down, into a 4″ pot (plastic or clay are both acceptable). Use cactus soil as your medium with 1″ of space between the soil line and the rim of the pot. Water until the soil drains from the bottom.

Place saran wrap over the top of the pot so that it is covered, and tape into place.

Keep your seedling in a sunny window, only removing plastic to water if the topsoil becomes dry. Keep soil moist but not soggy. Wait until it has sprouted 4 leaves to remove the plastic wrap, and remove the wrap at night to prevent shock.

Step Three - Year One

Your seedling should remain in it’s 4″ pot for about 12 months, or until it begins to become root-bound. Both a slow release and a water soluble fertilizer should be used, and should match or be close to a 3-1-2 ratio. Ensure the slow-release fertilizer is placed along the edges of the pot to prevent root burn.

If your home humidity is below 60%, thoroughly mist the seedling twice daily, once in the morning and once in the evening. Ensure that your seedling is exposed to fresh, moving air - either by window (if appropriate temperatures outdoors) or fan. Stake the seedling if needed if it begins to grow diagonally.

When your seedling reaches 18″ in height, cut it back to 12″, cutting 1″ above a leaf node. Continue to cut back the stem and branches at 18″ to encourage a stronger trunk, more branching, and stronger roots until it is time to re-pot.

Growing Season (May - October)

Fertilize your seedling weekly with a water soluble fertilizer. Ensure that your seedling is kept in temperatures of 25 c / 77 f or higher, with 14-16 hours of direct sunlight. If sunlight is limited, supplement with a strong grow light kept 12″ above the highest point of the seedling.

Dormant Season (November - April)

Fertilize your seedling every other week with a water soluble fertilizer. Ensure that your seedling is kept in temperatures of 20 c / 68 f or higher, with 10-12 hours of direct sunlight. If sunlight is limited or weak (such as in the north), supplement with a strong grow light kept 12″ above the highest point of the seedling.

Step Four - Years Two & Three

At this point your seedling should be between 12″ and 18″ high, with several branches and the beginnings of a woody trunk. There should be visible roots at the bottom of the pot it is growing in, and the soil should be drying quickly between watering. If this is not the case, continue to let your tree grow before this step. Some trees are faster or slower than others, and impatience will harm your tree in the long run.

Taking care to not disturb the root ball, re-pot your tree into a 6″ diameter pot. This will be its pot until it is comfortably around 30″ - 36″ tall, or becomes root-bound again. Use cactus soil, and re-apply the slow release fertilizer if you have not already done so.

Allow your tree to grow 12″ at a time before pruning off 6″. This will continue to encourage an early bushy growth. Avoid pruning too often, even if growth is adequate, with at least 3-4 months between pruning, and 1-2 months delay after re-potting. Continue to follow the instructions above for fertilization, heat, and light requirements.

Once your tree has outgrown it’s 6″ pot, it is ready for a more permanent pot, between 10″ and 12″.

Bonus Tips

Your seedling will likely take 5-7 years before it fruits, and its fruit will likely not be the same or even very similar to the lemon you began with.

It’s a good idea to keep 2-3 trees at a time, as one may not fruit, or you may lose one to sickness or accidental neglect.

Citrus trees love acidic soil, so perform a soil test every 4-6 months to ensure the soil is adequate.

Allow soil to completely dry before watering again, and then water heavily to “flush” the soil.

Once the temperature is consistently above 10 c / 50 f both day and night, you can move your citrus tree outdoors for better sunlight. Do it incrementally to prevent shock (1 hour outdoors on day one, 2 hours on day two, etc).

Very Brief Guide to [tumblr], for Reddit refugees

Shit You Must Do Right Fucking Now:

Change your profile picture, blog header, and title to something other than the defaults. Do it right now. You will be mistaken for a bot otherwise, and blocked.

Go into Settings -> Dashboard, scroll down to Preferences, and turn off the options in the picture. This will get rid of most of the algorithmic stuff.

Very Brief Guide To [tumblr], For Reddit Refugees

Turn off Tumblr Live. You have to snooze it once every 7 days for some stupid reason. It's hosted through another company and will steal your data if you use it.

Go to your blog settings (under the little person menu) and turn off these two settings:

Turn off infinite scroll (lags the site) and turn on timestamps on posts, in the same menu as Preferences.

Basic Features of the Site:

Reblogs drive the entire site. If you'd upvote something on Reddit, you'd reblog it on Tumblr. You can add text, images, or tags to a reblog, but you're not required to.

The dashboard is the equivalent to your Reddit feed, and contains the posts of all the people you follow, with the newest at the top

You can send an ask to someone, and it'll appear in their askbox for them to answer. You can receive them too, or turn off the settings if you don't want.

Tags aren't actually used for finding stuff (search function is dogshit), but are more for categorizing. People also talk in tags. Because Tumblr is weird, you can't use quotation marks (") or commas in them without fucking it up

You can filter both tags and phrases under Account Settings; doing this will put a filter over a post that contains them, which you'll have to click through to see the post itself. Useful for avoiding hate speech or blocking out annoying stuff

You can make polls in posts. Here's one now.

Likes are useless. They literally do fuck-all except send a notification to the OP.

Stuff Tumblr Does That Other Sites Don't:

Very old posts (I'm talking from like 2012) often circulate on this site. There's no such thing as a post being "too old" to reblog

Blocking is highly encouraged; you can block someone for any reason. Even for just being annoying.

If you and someone else are following each other, you are mutuals. Mutuals are fucking awesome and are treasured like friends. Mutuals are a thing on other sites but Tumblr treats em differently.

You can screenshot someone's tags if you like them and add them to a reblog. This is called "peer review"

Sometimes someone will find a blog and go through it and like/reblog a bunch of posts. This is totally fine and not "creepy" like it is seen as on other sites.

Tumblr jokes often rely on Continuing The Bit and a "yes, and?" attitude. Goncharov is probably the best example of this.

We are fucking infested with bots. They will either have totally blank profiles or be filled with porn. Block and report on sight.

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Don't try to do epic clapbacks here, you'll probably just get laughed at or blocked. If someone is bugging you or spouting bigoted bullshit, block them.

Reblog art!!! Artists often struggle to gain traction on here; reblogging will give them a boost.

Not every reblog needs a comment or tag in it

You can go all out with tagging your stuff to organize it, or you can just leave it all blank. Someone might ask "hey, can you tag these posts as [x]?" and you can decide if you want to do that or not. It's generally polite to oblige, but "no" is still reasonable.

Avoid discourse like the plague. Filter it, block people who start it, scroll past it when you see it. Just don't get involved in it. Ever.

Don't put fandom tags or jokes on someone's posts about serious matters or personal shit

You're responsible for curating your own dashboard; if you complain about constantly seeing stuff you don't like, that's probably on you. Don't be afraid to unfollow.

Follower count doesn't matter much here and you don't have to make yours known if you don't want to.

Reblog, don't repost. Reblogging keeps the credit and doesn't "steal" engagement like Twitter retweets.

If someone likes something a LOT, they might reblog it like 30 times in a row. This is normal

Having a post blow up is actually kinda a bad thing, since it floods your notifications. There's a sort of in-joke about how having a big post is awful and people jokingly try to stop their own posts from blowing up, often in vain.

Tips:

Get XKit Rewritten if you're on desktop, it's a really helpful extension

In the little drop-down menu next to the 'Post now' button you can either save a draft, schedule a post, or add it to your queue. The queue lets you post things in order at a certain interval, which you can change. It's good for spreading stuff out over time.

You can use Shift+R to quickly reblog stuff and Shift+Q to queue!

Filter your notifications under Activity - you can also see some neat graphs

Find each other! If you want your old Reddit communities to stick together, seek out other refugees and follow them.

Have fun on [tumblr], everyone!

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esile-pr23

4 years ago

How to Really Comprehend a Scientific Paper

**credit to my research advisor, she’s an amazing mentor and I aspire to be just like her someday :)

Read the abstract. Write down what the paper says it is going to be about.

Read the introduction. Write down what the paper says it is looking to accomplish and how.

Read the conclusion. Write down what the paper actually did accomplish.

Go through and find all the pictures, graphs, or diagrams. Write notes explaining these images to yourself.

Read the whole paper start to finish. Write a summary of the paper as though you are explaining it to a layperson, and then another summary as though you are explaining it to a colleague.

Throughout all of the above steps:

If there are words you don’t know google them and write down the definitions

If the paper defines a formula, law, variable, etc in a certain way write that down

If there are references to or recommendations of other literature write those down. After the last step if there’s anything you’re uncertain about or would like more information on look to that list for further reading

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esile-pr23

1 year ago

They are so IN SYNC

Okay you know those lines from romance books and fanfics where they’re like “our lips fit perfectly together”?

It’s obviously a commonly used thing that doesn’t actually make sense when you think about it, but explain to me how this kiss actually matches that description???

Like there is something about how Alex kisses back that makes my entire brain go 🫨

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esile-pr23

6 years ago

Found you through your florist stories. Is there a way I could subtly tell someone to fuck off with flowers?

In flower language? Probably, I think I’ve even reblogged something to that effect. But….most ppl don’t know flower language anymore. No, if you need a true “fuck you” then here’s my DIY official tutorial, the Death Bouquet:

(This is gonna be the least wholesome post I’ve ever written and I am so sorry but I am also laughing while I type this.)

I’ve been railing on Pink Floyd roses a lot for their thorns lately because one has sliced my hand open recently. Get some of those.

Next. Get you some ornamental thorn roses. (I’m not 100% but I think mermaid climbing roses fall into this and are also brutal)

Next. Thistles. Lots of thistles. More thistles than sense.

Next. Dusty miller flower greens. Soft. Weak. Floppy. Clog up your bouquet with these, especially in the middle where they’ll make the stems stick together.

Next. Baby’s Breath. This is your secret weapon. You can’t tell when they’re dead half the time, they’re strong. Too strong. The wrong touch and FOOOOOOF. Tiny leaves and petals EVERYWHERE it’s as good as a glitter bomb.

NEXT. Abandon common arrangement sense. Fillers first, clog the center with fillers. Clog it, make it dense. Stick a rose or two in, but you want at least 70% filler.

NEXT. Hide the thistles. Hide them under the roses. Make sure some of the heads are at hand level. Spray them with water. You want those stems damp and miserable. Thistles harden as they die.

NEXT. The roses. Line this puppy in roses. Ornamentals and Floyds should be along the outside, this bouquet should be DEADLY to put any weight on. Spray them with water. This bouquet should be so tightly packed that your “handle” looks more like a solid mass than anything else.

NEXT. Wrap them in paper. TISSUE PAPER. Thin, weak, damp. Even gardening gloves can’t save your hands now.

NEXT. Be strong, treat the bouquet like a bed of nails. The more evenly spread the weight, the less likely you are to get hurt. You will be tempted to give these roses away in person, but be strong. Your ginger body language will give up the game.

FINALLY. Deliver them. Know. KNOW that your plan has worked, because anyone with any sense will see a bouquet and just FIST it with one hand. Maybe the other will come to support it. But just that. Just the hands. Meeting thorny death. A dozen little needle presses. The paper will be too damp to unravel, to see what has done this. They’ll grab it a few times, trying to learn the secret.

Deliver it with a nice note. Sincere, heartfelt. Make them feel obligated to deep the Death Bouquet. This is where the density comes in. Damp, suffocating, these flowers will mold in secret. They’ll die and their odor will permeate the air. But, because of the nature of the baby’s breath….it’ll be hard to find. Hard to detect. The roses will be sheltered because they’re on the outside, getting air and water. But the center will mold, and stink.

Eventually, they’ll realize it’s the flowers, and they’ll move the bouquet, and POOF, it will shatter, leaves and petals everywhere, releasing a gag worthy odor unlike anything they’ve smelled before.

And that’s how you say “fuck you” with a bouquet.

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esile-pr23

1 year ago

Well, well, well look who came running back

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esile-pr23

5 years ago

While millions of people are staying home to reduce the spread of COVID-19, Scribd is making our digital library of ebooks and audiobooks free for everyone: scribd.com/readfree

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