Homemade tangerine is an exotic plant that cannot fail to attract attention and not please the eye. Anyone who sees him visiting friends will probably want to have such a fragrant tree with beautiful flowers at home. The only thing that can stop from acquiring a new green friend is that citrus plants require special climate control and care. However, it’s easy to take care of the tangerine: it will survive on the windowsill of any apartment, even in the most volatile climate.
The plant can be bought in the store in the form of a seedling - a finished grafted tree that will definitely bear fruit. But if you can’t afford a ready-made plant, you don’t need to get upset: it is very easy to grow it yourself at home, directly from the seeds of the fruits you just bought in the store and eaten.
Of course, you will have to tinker with seed tangerine grown at home on your own: it grows slowly, its fruits are far from immediately as smooth and ideal as in the pictures, and indeed it’s not a fact that they will appear immediately, and you won’t need to take any additional measures to get them. And so be it, but how much effort will be invested in the tree and how it will turn out: original, unique, your own.
Description
The mandarin tree belongs to the root family, the foliage has a spherical shape, shiny leaves change every three years. White mandarin flowers are large and fragrant. Such trees are propagated both by seeds and vegetatively. Many grow citrus fruits at home, but 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. We will consider further how to grow mandarin from seed at home.
Which seeds to choose?
Now a large number of hybrid tangerines are sold, and it is better to take bones like these. They grow noticeably quickly, are more likely to bloom and give good results. Ordinary mandarins often have very few or few seeds inside, but 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 plant a future plant, then take 10 or more seeds, because it is not always successful to plant a plant.
Soak the seeds
How to plant a mandarin seed at home? It is best to send the seed to the ground as quickly as possible. At least right after you eat citrus. The faster it is in the ground, the better and faster it will grow. But if you can’t 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. It is not necessary to fill in too much, but also it is impossible to allow to dry. It is optimal to add a little water there as needed. And if you don’t want or cannot monitor the dryness of gauze, a hydrogel will come to the rescue. Today it can be bought at any store with gardening products. The hydrogel is folded 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 a hydrogel is to create the effect of drip irrigation, in our case, it will constantly moisten the grains until the moment they sprout.
Growing tangerine from seed at home is not difficult. First of all, it is necessary to prepare the soil and capacity for planting.
Soil preparation
Mandarin from the stone does not accept acidic soil, so you need to be careful about the selection of soil. 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). It is also possible to independently make the right soil 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 sift out all the excess. In extreme cases, if there is no humus, you can just take the soil and sand.
Capacity for landing
Before planting mandarin from the seed, you need to prepare a pot. The first container for a new plant may even be a simple small plastic cup. Small pots are also suitable, but always with a drainage hole. At the bottom, be sure to put pebbles for drainage.
We plant mandarin
From sowing to seedlings usually takes from 15 days to a month. Growing at this time tangerine from the stone at home, you need to monitor soil moisture and air temperature in the room. It should be no lower than 20 and no higher than 25 degrees Celsius. It is not recommended to artificially maintain a similar temperature: when the plant sprouts, it will be more difficult for him to get used to the usual room conditions.
If the seeds sprouted all together in a seedling box, they need to be transplanted into separate small pots. When the tangerines from the seed will have 3-4 small leaves each, it will become clear which of the seeds has sprouted well and will form strong, strong trees, and which will not survive. It happens that from one seed two trees are formed: then they are either planted in different pots or one of the two plants is left - the one that sprouted better.
The next time the tangerine tree is transplanted already when it starts to run out of space in the pot: it needs to be transplanted into a slightly larger container, but not immediately into a large one, so the soil will be waterlogged, which will impede the development of the plant. Before the tree begins to bear fruit, it is usually transplanted once a year. Already fruiting tangerines from the seed are transplanted every two or three years, but the pot is picked up more by 4-6 centimeters, and not by 1-2. It is necessary to transplant carefully so as not to deepen the root neck. For the oldest plants, transplanting 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, a tree is regularly formed. For the first time, if the branches do not form beautifully naturally, pinch them when the tree reaches a height of 30-40 cm. The tree takes out side branches, but this is not enough to start flowering and fruiting. The pinch continues until 4-5 order branches are formed. Before the mandarin will finally form and bear the first fruits, at least 3-4 years will pass.
There is another way to form mandarin at an early stage: the shoots are deflected 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 bend in parallel, closer to the ground.
Growing mandarin from seed at home provides for thorough care of the plant. Its features will be discussed later.
Take care of a homemade tangerine tree
Depending on the age and purpose of the tree, care for it differs. Regular watering, spraying from parasites and certain conditions of detention are enough for young specimens. You can fertilize plants with special fertilizers for citrus fruits: these are now easy to find in stores. The tangerine tree naturally loves plentiful watering, sun and warmth, so it will 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, next to the young tangerine you can hold an additional container with water, regularly spray the leaves of the plant so that they are shiny, well-groomed and nourished. In winter, tangerines are illuminated, and in summer, during the hottest time of the day, they are shaded.
Adult tangerine trees that have already begun to bear fruit need winter rest: watering becomes more rare, and the temperature in the room can be about 10-12 degrees. It is necessary to increase watering of the formed tangerine tree in spring and summer moderately and smoothly.
For the formation of a bud, 16-18 degrees of heat is enough, and in summer the temperature should not exceed 25 degrees. It is necessary to carefully handle the colors: observe the temperature and extreme accuracy when spraying. It is common for a tree to turn to the main source of light, so it can be rotated around its axis so that the crown is beautiful and forms evenly. Even taking into account that the fruits of the tangerine tree are being sung for about six months, he still should arrange such a holiday in winter: even at low temperatures, they will gradually form.
We grow a fruiting 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 quickly get tasty beautiful fruits, tangerines (we will consider the cultivation from seed in the article) are planted.
Graft
Vaccination is done in a special period - the period of sap flow of mandarin: in April, May, August. For a successful result, it is recommended to observe cleanliness, speed, accuracy of action.
For vaccination, you need to cook a tree grown from seed - the strongest and most developed. The trunk of the tree should be no thinner than 6 mm. That plant to which another is planted is called a stock.
You also need to prepare a scion: take a fresh stalk or peephole from the fruiting tree. The branch must be no older than two years. In addition, an elastic tape, a budding garden knife and a garden var are useful.
The rootstock is notched, the notch height is about 10 cm. The notch is made in the form of the letter T: one centimeter horizontally, from two to four - vertically. Leaves and spikes 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 goes under a glass jar or a plastic bag: you need a special microclimate in order to plant it really well. Before it becomes clear whether the plant has been grafted or not, at least a month will pass. Therefore, it is better to plant several plants at once: it will not work out immediately to redo the procedure, it will be necessary to wait for the next period of sap flow.
As soon as the bud sprouts, it should gradually be accustomed to living in room conditions: remove the package and the winding. Increase ventilation. After a month, the new shoot begins to grow more confidently. Then it is cut neatly with a knife a little higher than the base of the shoot, obliquely, and covered with garden var. In order for the plant to grow vertically, a wand is put in a pot. At this stage, the vaccination procedure can be considered successful, and the plant can only carefully monitor, care and fertilize.
Conclusion
So, we looked at how to grow mandarin from seed. If everything is done correctly, the plant will become a decoration of the house and will bear not decorative, but really tasty and juicy fruits.