CITRUS TREES PLANTED IN GALVANIZED RINGS

Here is a project we're finally ready to share the finished results (this was done over a month ago but I just put the post together this rainy weekend when we were housebound, ha!)

Planning for citrus trees

It all started with a plan (doesn't everything? ha).  We decided that since the regular orchard of fruit trees was behind the house, we still had the space here behind the garden that was unused.  It has water nearby and was just the right amount of space for three trees. Since we had three citrus trees, this was the best spot to put them.

Because of our soil (clay) we decided to go the open bottomed raised bed route just like we did with the peach/pear/apple/plum trees behind the house.  I was about to order more metal corner brackets and stopping to get wood, have it cut, build it, etc.

One day though, I had an epiphany: 

I realized that these galvanized fire rings could be perfect as a "raised bed".  They were 12" high, same as the wood boxes I built.  They were 36" in diameter and while a bit smaller than the 4x4 square boxes, with citrus trees that would be more than enough space around them (much bigger than any container and many people keep citrus in a container anyway).  BEST of all, there was no cutting, no buying anything extra, no hard work to do.  They come unassembled but literally took about 10 minutes for each one to just put in the screws and nuts and be done. 

Galvanized fire ring planter

Check this out!!!  

Boom!  Instant and, at least we think so, stylish above ground planter!

We bought ours online at Home Depot (sale/free shipping) but there are some here on Amazon.

Silver 36" Galvanized Fire Ring

This one is 18" deep, if you'd like deeper planting (we are thinking of deeper for another project, not involving fruit trees, ha).  

Galvanized fire rings on Amazon

And here is a link to all the ones Amazon sells that are similar.  Prices are always changing so check i

All I had to do was add the soil blend.  We used a combination of garden soil and raised bed mixture (to help with moisture and allow roots to move around).  

I broke up the ground underneath, put down some cardboard and layered the soil/compost. Once it got to the right height, I put the tree inside so that the root ball was fairly even with the top of the ring and continued filling around it with soil.

Tree planting ring

I filled the soil to the top and was done. It has settled of course since then and we top it off when necessary, but it worked far better than we could have expected. These will even be easy to wrap up in the Winter if we have a hard freeze coming.

Limes

Now that we are over a month in, we already have fruit growing. Since citrus will develop fruit while growing in pretty much any container, we decided to leave these on and see what happens. We pulled off a few so they weren't overloaded but each tree still has a couple so we'll see how it goes.  Eventually we'll put some companion plantings at the base of them in the rings, whatever works best for each type of fruit of course.  

This coming weekend we'll be putting straw mulch down around them to keep the moisture in this Summer.

Citrus Yard

Behold!  

We have a lime, a lemon and an orange!  By the way, it's the angle that looks like the lime and orange are close together but they are all spaced in more or less a triangle shape.  

This area we will be calling "The Citrus Yard".  We figured that it's easier to identify various parts of the property like "the orchard" or the "apiary" or the "dewberry patch".  So "citrus yard" seemed good enough.  Not sure what else we will plant back there, might need to let them get bigger so we can see what we have to work with but so far so good!

Let the citrus growing begin!