Homemade tangerine is an exotic plant that cannot but attract attention and please the eye. Anyone who sees him visiting friends will surely want to have such a fragrant tree with beautiful flowers at home. The only thing that can stop you from making a new green friend is that citrus plants require special climate control and care. However, it is the mandarin that is easy to care for: it will survive on the windowsill of any apartment, even in the most changeable climate.
The plant can be bought in the store in the form of a seedling - a ready-made grafted tree that will definitely bear fruit. But if you suddenly cannot afford to buy a ready-made plant, you should not be upset: it is very easy to grow it yourself at home, directly from the seeds of freshly bought in the store and eaten fruits.
no additional steps need to be taken to obtain them. And so be it, but how much effort will be invested in the tree and how it will turn out: original, unique, own.
Description
The mandarin tree belongs to the rue family, the foliage has a spherical shape, shiny leaves are replaced every three years. White mandarin flowers are large and fragrant. These trees are propagated both by seeds and vegetatively. Many grow citrus fruits at home, but in order for it to bloom and bear fruit, you need to take care of it in the right way. Farmers who grow tangerines for sale get good fruits by grafting. The same procedure can be performed at home, but you need to prepare. Consider further how to grow a tangerine from a stone at home.
Which seeds to choose?
Now a large number of hybrid tangerines are on sale, and it is better to take the bones just like that. They grow noticeably fast, have a high probability of blooming and producing good fruits. Ordinary tangerines often have very few or no seeds inside, while hybrid varieties always have seeds, and they are quite large.
Choose a few seeds, whole, not dry,not damaged anywhere. If you are going to graft a future plant, then take 10 or more seeds, because it is not always possible to graft a plant successfully.
Soaking the seeds
How to plant a mandarin seed at home? It is better to send the seed to the ground as soon as possible. Even immediately after you eat a citrus. The sooner it is in the ground, the better and faster it will grow. But if it is not possible to immediately plant the seeds, you should not dry them and store them in this form for several days. Before planting the selected seeds in the ground, you need to let them swell, prepare for planting. To do this, put them in wet gauze for several days. Don't overfill, but don't let it dry out either. It is best to add a little water there as needed. And if you don’t want or don’t have the opportunity to monitor the dryness of the gauze, a hydrogel will come to the rescue. Today, you can buy it at any gardening supply store. The hydrogel folds into a small jar, and the seeds need to be placed somewhere in the middle so that they do not dry out from above or below. The main property of the hydrogel is to create the effect of drip irrigation, in our case, it will constantly moisten the grains until the very moment when they germinate.
Growing a tangerine from a stone at home is not difficult. First of all, you need to prepare the soil and capacity for planting.
Soil preparation
Mandarin fromthe bones do not accept acidic soil, so the selection of soil should be taken carefully. The desired substrate can be asked to pick up in the store: its acidity should be marked on the package as “neutral soil” (pH=6.5-7). Making the right soil on your own is also possible if you mix 2 parts of good quality humus, 2 parts of soil from the forest collected under deciduous trees, and 1 part of river sand, from which you need to weed out all unnecessary. As a last resort, if there is no humus, you can just take soil and sand.
Capacity for planting
Before you plant a tangerine from the stone, you need to prepare a pot. The first container for a new plant can even be a simple small plastic cup. Small pots are also suitable, but always with a drainage hole. Be sure to put pebbles for drainage at the bottom.
Planting a tangerine
From sowing to germination, it usually takes from 15 days to a month. Growing at this time mandarin from the stone at home, you need to monitor the soil moisture and the air temperature in the room. It should not be lower than 20 and not higher than 25 degrees Celsius. It is not recommended to artificially maintain such a temperature: when the plant sprouts, it will be more difficult for it to get used to normal room conditions.
If the seeds sprouted all together in the seedling box, they need to be transplanted into separate small pots. When tangerines from the stone will have 3-4 smallleaf, it will become clear which of the seeds germinated well and will form strong, strong trees, and which will not survive. It happens that two trees are formed from one seed: then they are either planted in different pots or one of the two plants is left - the one that sprouted better.
The next time a tangerine tree is transplanted already when it noticeably begins to run out of space in a pot: you need to transplant it into a slightly larger container, but you do not need to immediately into a larger one, so the soil will be waterlogged, which will prevent the development of the plant. Before the tree begins to bear fruit, it is usually transplanted once a year. Already fruiting tangerines from the stone are transplanted every two or three years, but the pot is already picked up by 4-6 centimeters more, and not by 1-2. It is necessary to transplant carefully so as not to deepen the root neck. For the oldest plants, transplantation is optional. They only replace the topsoil every few years with a new, fertile one.
How to form a beautiful tree?
To make your tangerine pleasing to the eye, the tree is regularly shaped. For the first time, if the branches do not form beautifully naturally, they are pinched when the tree reaches a height of 30-40 cm. The tree lets out side branches, but this is not at all enough for it to begin to bloom and bear fruit. Pinching continues until branches of 4-5 orders are formed. Before the tangerine is finally formed and bears the first fruits, it will take at least 3-4 years.
There is another waytangerine formation at an early stage: shoots are rejected by fixation. To do this, you need a wire: with one end it is fixed on a branch, with the other it is fixed at the edge of the pot. So that the branches lean parallel, closer to the ground.
Growing mandarin from the stone at home involves careful care of the plant. Its features will be discussed further.
Caring for homemade tangerine tree
Depending on the age and purpose of the tree, care for it is different. Young specimens need regular watering, spraying from parasites and certain conditions of detention. You can fertilize the plants with special fertilizers for citrus fruits: these are now easy to find in stores. The tangerine tree naturally loves abundant watering, sun and warmth, so it would be ideal to keep it, for example, on the windowsill on the sunny side of the apartment. At the same time, make sure that in winter the temperature in the room does not fall below 14 degrees. In addition to watering, you can keep an additional container of water next to a young tangerine, regularly spray the leaves of the plant so that they are shiny, well-groomed and nourished. In winter, the tangerine is illuminated, and in the summer, at the hottest time of the day, it is shaded.
Mature tangerine trees that have already begun to bear fruit need winter dormancy: watering becomes more rare, and the room temperature can be about 10-12 degrees. Increase the watering of a mature tangerine tree in spring and summer should be moderate and gradual.
16-18 degrees are enough to form a budheat, and in summer the temperature should not exceed 25 degrees. It is necessary to handle flowers carefully: observe the temperature regime and extreme accuracy when spraying. The tree tends to turn towards the main light source, so it can be rotated around its axis so that the crown is beautiful and evenly formed. Even considering that the fruits of the tangerine tree ripen for about six months, it is still worth it to arrange such a holiday in the winter: even at low temperatures, they will gradually form.
Growing a fruitful tangerine tree
Under natural conditions, wild tangerines bear fruit in 4-5 years. In the first year, the taste of the fruit is very different from the original for the worse. To get tasty beautiful fruits faster, tangerines (we will look at growing from the stone in the article) are grafted.
Vaccination
Vaccination is done in a special period - the period of tangerine sap flow: in April, May, August. For a successful result, it is recommended to observe cleanliness, speed, accuracy of actions.
For grafting, it is necessary to prepare a tree grown from a stone - the strongest and most developed. The trunk of the tree should be no thinner than 6 mm. The plant to which another is rooted is called a rootstock.
You also need to prepare a scion: take a fresh cutting or eye from a fruit-bearing tree. The branch must be no older than two years. In addition, an elastic band, a budding pruning knife and a pruning knife will come in handy.
The trunk of the stock is incised, the height of the incision is about 10 cm. The incision is made in the form of the letter T: one centimeter alonghorizontally, from two to four - vertically. Leaves and thorns are removed from the scion. The kidney is cut with a thin layer of wood and inserted into the incision. This place must be quickly and carefully wrapped with tape. After the procedure, the plant is sent under a glass jar or a plastic bag: a special microclimate is needed in order for it to take root really well. Before it becomes clear whether the plant was grafted or not, it will take at least a month. Therefore, it is better to graft several plants at once: it will not be possible to redo the procedure immediately, you will have to wait for the next period of sap flow.
As soon as the kidney sprouts, it should be gradually accustomed to life in room conditions: remove the bag and winding. Increase ventilation. A month later, a new shoot begins to grow more confidently. Then it is cut off neatly with a knife a little higher than the base of the shoot, obliquely, and covered with garden pitch. In order for the plant to grow vertically, a stick is placed in the pot. At this stage, the grafting procedure can be considered successful, and the plant can only be carefully monitored, cared for and fertilized.
Conclusion
So, we looked at how to grow a tangerine from a seed. If everything is done correctly, the plant will become a decoration of the house and will bring not decorative, but really tasty and juicy fruits.
