Underplanting Citrus trees with colourful annuals
Preparation for winter colour.
We want to be straight up with you when it comes to living with a citrus tree. They have a few personality traits that are not so socially acceptable.
One of their traits is that they are very selfish, they do not like to share.
Usually, we’d say, forget the idea of planting around the base of a citrus tree as it will sulk! It may even stop growing altogether.
Plenty of us like to grow our Citrus tree as a feature in lovely pot or container and the top of the top screams for some interest and colour.
We’ve got this natty little solution that will give you some colour and keep your tree happy and not in competition with extra roots and the needs of top plantings.
If you have a large pot you should have left at least 100 -150mm space from the lip to potting mix, this space allows you to get plenty of water into the pot.
It is this space that we’re going to use. Decide on what you’d like to plant, nothing too large certainly an annual as you are going to have to swap these pots over to keep your big baby citrus happy.
In this photo, you see we are using little seedlings of ornamental kale, which is colourful, multi-coloured and forms gorgeous little cabbage-like plants. For winter you could consider, viola or pansies, primula, cyclamen, curly parsley, just nothing too large growing.
We plant the seedlings into little pots, with some quality potting mix and osmocote, and then place them around the base of the tree. When they are all snugged in and sitting well, we simply place some sugar cane mulch between the pots as a cushion and comforting layer for the tree. Water in with some Charlie Carp and away we go.
if your tree is planted in the garden then please keep the underneath area of the tree clear and loaded up with compost, manure and soft mulch, no plants, not even lawn. This will keep your tree thrilled, the centre of attention and thriving.
This feature pic is from summer we, used a very beautiful red nasturtium, to complete our feature pot.
