So sorry it's been so long! Hope you all have had a wonderful Christmas and are headed to a marvelous New Year! I have had a few days off from the High School job and have been trying to do some cleaning and updating here at Wicked Raven. One of the things that badly needs done is to transplant the Mandarin Tree.
This is a Mandarin tree that we have been growing for about three years now. It is a four year old tree and belongs to Reed, my 13 year old son. He has chosen a couple of interesting plants to grow indoors and this is one of them. The pot it is in is only about a 12" pot and it has now far outgrown it so it will be transplanted to the large 36" pot on the right. It is the dead of winter and has been -20 degrees for about 2 weeks so this process has to be done indoors and as the pot is so large and hard for me to move - its getting done right where it is! The mandarin doesn't seem to mind temperature swings as much as the lemon trees do, and the loss of light doesn't seem to bother it either. It has not produced so far though so I don't know if that will make a difference. The lemon trees are all stressed right now and have lost all their leaves. The window that this sits in front of is a set of French doors and they are right above our garage so if the garage door opens it affects the temperature and when it is -20 even the floor in that area is cold.
Above you can see the new pot and the tools I will use to do the transplant. I use the trowel just to loosen the soil in the new pot (it had an avocado in it before that didn't live). The water jug is only half way filled as I will be putting worm juice in the rest of it so that I am feeding at the same time I am watering the new soil. The pink bucket is what I actually use to scoop the soil out into a bucket to make room for the plant.
This is the bucket with the worm juice in it. I had to thaw it out - I have been freezing the worm juice to make sure there are no white flies or other bugs that could have gotten into the garage (where my worms live - see the worm blog at http://wickedraven.blogspot.com/2013/01/finally-worm-one-or-growing-dirt-in_11.html Now that its thawed I will mix it into the water jug about half and half.
I've dug out about as much soil as I need to. (The spike plant you see sticking up in this picture is an Amaryllis that I have been nursing for about 3 years as well - it always looses its leaves and blooms around Christmas - perfect)!
I put the whole potted plant into the hole I have scooped out to make sure I have it big enough. Then I put some of the worm/water mixture into the bottom of the hole and tipped the tree out of the old pot and into the new.
Scoop some of the soil out of the bucket and make sure you get the roots covered well enough that a good dose of water wont uncover them. I did gently press the soil around the pot, watered once, added some more dirt and watered again. That way I know I have good soil coverage on the roots and that I have watered the plant adequately. The blue ball you see there is a glass fishing float. I often add them to my plants so that when I pour water in the pot I can pour it on the float and it doesn't erode a hole in the soil. Glass floats can be found at antique shops or sometimes on the beach if you are really lucky!
This is a rooted avocado plant that we will be putting into the pot that the Mandarin came out of. We have tried the avocado before and have not been successful, but we are learning every time and eventually we will get it. The last one we did not water often enough to get water to the bottom of the pot. Ill keep you posted on how that goes and will do an avocado blog at a later date to give you all the details.
Don't be afraid to try things that you think wont grow in your area - just grow them indoors! Don't worry if you don't have a lot of room - put the plant on a rolling plant stand so you can have it in front of any window and roll it out of the way if you need to! Ill show you some of those in a future blog - that's a pallet upcycle!
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