Exotic Fruits That Can Be Grown From Bones!

Many beginner growers are familiar with the same feeling, when a fragile sprout suddenly emerged from a bone, planted with your hand.

Some have a sense of wonder and involvement in Nature.

The others include “God’s mode”. But in a closed space, and even in winter, both often pour out into uncontrolled botanical ecstasy, and seeds of all exotic fruits that were just found in the district are sent to the ground by generous handfuls.

This is understandable: to grow from a stone a lemon, a pomegranate, and even a peach is much more interesting than buying a ready-made plant or getting it from a cut. Let’s try to find out which fruit seeds can be planted and what such experiments at home can lead to.

From bones to citruses

Mandarin, orange and a hybrid of their clementine, lemon and lime, grapefruit, pomelo (shaddock) and their hybrid swat , mineola (a kind of tanzhelo – mandarin and grapefruit hybrid), kumquat limequat (hybrid kumquat With lime), orange (hybrid kumquat with mandarin unshiu), calamondin , etc.: representatives of the genus citrus are beautiful, fragrant, multifaceted and available for experiments almost all year round.

Bones selected for sowing should be as fresh as possible: without additional moistening, their germination decreases every day. General recommendations for planting are quite simple: flush bones and plant them in a well-moistened mixture of garden land, peat and river sand (or in a special citrus soil). Once the shoots have 1-2 real leaves, they need to be planted. And it is better to immediately plant them in separate pots or cups.

Seeds of citrus are interesting because you never know what will grow from them: their seedlings, especially hybrids, usually do not preserve the varietal characteristics of their parents. From the bone of citrus grow wild, and his own harvest from him will have to wait, perhaps 10 years. Therefore, if your goal – to collect lemons or oranges directly from the windowsill, it is better to find cuttings of the right varieties and plant their seedlings. You can do it in a year and a half after landing.

From the bones of a lemon, orange or grapefruit, excellent rootstocks grow – healthy, strong and originally adapted to the domestic conditions. But kumquats, mandarins and different hybrids are more capricious and are not suitable for rootstocks: the root system is not so powerful.

Despite the generic “community”, citrus fruits when grown from seeds behave differently. Mandarins, for example, are “slow” in growth, but not so demanding on the composition of the soil. The first shoots from mandarin seeds can appear in 3-4 weeks. Planted at the same time, kumquat will “think” for at least 2 months. Each citrus has its own time of flowering and fruiting. But they have enough common enemies: dry air, spider mite, scabbard, aphids, etc.