Too late to plant a hardy orange tree out?

Just like Clueless then:D

 

:D Hello ... I would just like to put my two cents worth here ...

I live in the middle of orange orchards (or are they called groves?) ... thousands and thousands of trees ... believe me they are not hardy and we have many varieties. Although I personally don't get frost because of the protection of the trees (perhaps one or two mornings of a glistening, last year lowest +3.5c) there are 'pockets' here where frost descends and burns the tops of the orange trees.

An interesting concept here is that orange groves are often 'bordered' with lemon trees (Lisbon I believe) so if a frost comes it will hit them first .. the growers are less interested in lemons than oranges.

They also plant rose bushes at a crucial point, usually near the pump house, because if a 'bug' or 'disease' is going to hit it will get the rose bush first and they know to take precautions.

Perhaps this will put a few things into perspective.

 

I find Olive to be hardier than citrus, but there are degrees of hardiness.
Especially when pot grown.
I think you were lucky to get away with it ziggy being that the roots were frozen.

 

Thats a very sensible aproach to temperature & pest control Victoriá,
rose bushes being like the canary in the coal mine, both covered in soot.

According to Wiki, Orange orchards are more commonly called Groves.

 

Had some Watercress at the same time that was in a solid block of ice, its growing in the greenhouse now.

 

Hi All

I have 80 olive trees in Italy, we are high up at 500 metres and get snow - heavy snow for upto a week per year. My olive trees survive well, they are on a slope, so the water runs off. We lost a young one last year, but another young tree survived. Although we get this cold weather we can get very warm sunny days in mid winter, so this is most probably why they survive, it is not prolonged freezing weather.

My neighbour here in the north of england, couldn't save his olive tree, which was in a pot, but i think possibly left out in the cold too long in a pot.

It is interesting what you say Victoria about the rose bushes as they do that in Italy also, but at each end of a grapevine, so any trouble hits the rose first. I have seen many lemon trees here, but slightly lower down than us, mainly in pots at our level and also orange trees quite happy.
I can't wait to give them a go!

 

Hi there Pixie .. how fascinating that they do the same thing in Italy with roses .. I have also noticed it in the vineyards here ... so there we all learn a lesson.

We live and learn ...

 

Coming back to this, I have to admit my total ignorance ... :o When I saw the beautiful rose bushes around the pump houses, I thought 'how lovely that they camoflage the little concrete sheds' (you don't have wood sheds here as they would rot and/or dry out in a couple of years) .. and t'other half thought the same. Years later when it came up in a discussion we discovered why the rose bushes were there .. not to beautify the area but for specific purpose of early disease detection ... and the modern world thinks they know it all .. :DOH:

 

in spain dropped to -4 and that was just at night twice only and some trees lost their leaves, dont think a orange tree could survive in england, or a lemon tree

 

Meyer Lemon can apparently take -7C if kept dry. I see no reason why Citrus (only the hardier types) can't take below -5C if kept dry. Only problem is that our nights tend to be cold for long periods of time, rather than short periods.

It's worth noting I got a Citrus limon (not as hardy as Meyer) through 4 winters as a seedling from 2005-2009 but 2009 killed off with -5C but that was a seedling.

 

The big problem is of course that often that short periods of temperature of -5C might be do-able, but here in this country often if it is going to be -5C itll be -5C for more than an hour. Often Mediterranean countries will get sub zero temperatures in winter, and at times that happens right to the coast, but they are often only sub zero for a very short time.

Also not forgetting in very cold spells we often struggle to rise much above 0C in the day, whereas Mediterranean countries will respond to at least 10C following a freezing night.

So we do often struggle with Mediterranean coastal plants unfortunately.