Don't Skip This Crucial Gardening Task This Fall Or Your Citrus Trees Will Suffer

Compost is great stuff for the garden. It helps build rich humus, the critical top layers of soil that contain the microorganisms necessary for breaking down organic matter into plant food. Citrus trees are ravenous plants — how else would they produce all that enormous juice-filled fruit in abundance? Regular dosings of fertilizer (a.k.a. plant food) are essential to grow and care for an orange tree, or any other citrus for that matter, especially if you want them to survive and thrive during the difficult winter months. Spreading a layer of compost around the base of your citrus tree is a task you need to check off your fall gardening to-do list.

Citrus trees continue to grow through fall and bear fruit from late fall onwards. A hefty dressing of compost provides the slow-release food needed to create tasty fruit and put down roots before winter — that's why you're growing these trees, after all! Savvy gardeners plant citrus in early fall, especially in the frost-less warmer parts of the U.S. It also goes hand-in-hand with fertilizing, acting as a sort of protective "lid" for the fertilizer. (Bonus tip: Keep adding fertilizer from February through October for the first four years of your tree's life for the tastiest oranges, lemons, limes, and more.) Composting also helps keep the soil damp around a plant's roots or, conversely, improves drainage in pot-planted citrus trees.