Pomelo
Citrus maxima
A citrus with an appetite for sun and little else — three feeds a year, and stay ahead of the cold.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Yellow
- Sunlight
- Full sun, six to eight hours of it at the least.
- Watering
- Deep and infrequent watering, letting it dry part-way between.
- Feeding
- A citrus-specific fertilizer three times a year.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- March
- Pruning
- Minimal pruning: shaping and dead wood, once the fruit is off.
- Overwintering
- Move it indoors before the temperature falls below 7°C.
- Feb–Mar Bud Break
- Mar–Jun Flowering
- Jun–Nov Fruiting
- Nov–Dec Senescence
- Jan–Feb Senescence
- Plant spacing
- 19 ft 8 in
- In-row spacing
- 19 ft 8 in
- Between rows
- 24 ft 7 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, shallow and far-reaching
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 4 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 39–59 ft across, about 2–3× the width of the plant
Almost all of a tree’s roots are in the top two feet of soil, where the air is, and they run out well past the branch tips. The deep taproot most people picture belongs to the seedling; the tree grows out of it and spends the rest of its life spreading sideways instead.
The habit is Pomelo’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Leaf miners Citrus leaf miner
- Scale insects Immobile brown or white bumps fixed to stems and leaf undersides, sucking sap and weakening growth. Wipe off with a damp cloth or dab with horticultural soap; watch for the sooty mold that follows.
- Canker Citrus canker
- Phytophthora root and foot rot Root rot (Phytophthora)
- Iron chlorosis Yellowing leaves that keep bright green veins, on acid-loving plants growing in soil or water that is too limey.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Scale insects
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Scale insects
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Parasitic wasps Braconidae & TrichogrammaHunts Leaf miners
Tiny, stingless wasps that lay eggs in or on caterpillars, aphids, and moth eggs — the white cocoons riding a hornworm are their calling card, so leave that caterpillar be. Umbel flowers with shallow nectar keep the adults fuelled.
Green-leaved fruit, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com