Pomelo

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Pomelo (lat. Citrus maxima or Citrus grandis) - a species of fruit trees of the genus Citrus of the Rutovye family. Other names are sheddock or pompelmus. The homeland of the plant is considered to be Southeast Asia. In Europe, they learned about this wonderful fruit culture in the XIV century. Today the pomelo is cultivated in India, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, as well as in Israel and Tahiti. The culture is also grown in the United States, but in small quantities. In Russia and neighboring countries, pomelo is cultivated as a room culture.

Characteristics of culture

Pomelo is an evergreen tree with a spherical crown and reaching a height of 14-15 m. The leaves are rather large, green, leathery, elliptical, with a pronounced central vein. Flowers of medium size, up to 7 cm, single or collected in inflorescences of 2-10 pieces. The fruit is round or pear-shaped, the color varies from light green to yellow or orange. The fruit is covered with a thick skin, inside it is divided into equal or unequal lobes, compacted with a rigid white septum. The pomelo fruit is one of the largest among citrus fruits. Under natural conditions, the pomelo reaches a weight of 10 kg. The taste of the pulp is sweetish with sourness and slight hints of bitterness.

Popular varieties

* Khao paen is a variety that has been cultivated in Thailand for 160 years. Representatives of the variety have a greenish-yellow spherical fruit. The peel of the fruit is wrinkled, 1-2 cm thick. The flesh of the fruit is white, juicy, sweet with sourness, the taste of bitterness is practically absent.

* Khao phuang is an artificial variety. Representatives of the variety form pear-shaped fruits with a "neck", with a diameter of about 12-13 cm. The skin is green, shiny, smooth. The pulp is juicy, has an excellent taste with sourness and no bitterness. The variety is cultivated in huge quantities in Thailand, as well as in the United States.

* Thongdi is also artificially bred. Fruits are spherical, up to 15 cm in diameter. The peel is relatively thin. The pulp is pink, juicy, sweet. Representatives of the variety develop without problems even in the most unfavorable citrus conditions for all.

Growing conditions

Light for growing pomelo is preferable bright and diffused, direct sunlight is undesirable. In spring and summer, plants are placed on the balcony or in the garden, but with the onset of cold nights they are brought into the room. The soil mixture for the culture should be loose, moist, fertile. Under natural conditions, the pomelo develops well on substrates consisting of limestone, sand, clay and earth enriched with salts.

Subtleties of reproduction and planting

The pomelo is propagated by the seed method and vegetatively, or rather, by air layers and cuttings. The seed method allows you to get more powerful trees, however, they will have to wait several years for fruiting, and they do not differ in rapid growth. Specimens obtained from cuttings and cuttings develop very slowly, but under optimal conditions and proper care, this difference will not be noticeable.

The seeds are removed from the fruit and immediately planted in pots with a substrate made up of humus and coarse sand. The seeding depth is 1-1.5 cm. After planting, the potted substrate is watered abundantly. Seedlings appear in 30-35 days. Often, several sprouts are formed from one seed. If the pomelo was planted in seedling containers, they are dived in the phase of two true leaves, but they do this very carefully so as not to damage the root system.

It is much more difficult to propagate a culture with air layers than other representatives of the genus Citrus. A pomelo, propagated in this way, blooms the next year. From the tree, the lowest branch is chosen, which has well-developed lateral shoots, then a circular incision is made 20 cm below the last branch and bent to a container, cut in half and placed against the pot where the mother bush is grown. The ringed area should be located in the middle of the container. Both halves of the container are fastened with wire. Thus, the fastened pot will hang from the branch.

The container should be filled with sawdust, moss, small shavings and sod-leaf humus, laid in layers. Layers are separated from the mother plant only when the growth of young shoots stops. It is important to regularly feed the cuttings with an ammonium nitrate solution. Instead of a pot, it is not forbidden to use ordinary plastic wrap with the same soil mixture, but before laying the layers, they are carefully treated with growth stimulants. Layers are separated in two steps: the first is under the pot when separating from the mother plant, the second is when the roots are freed from sawdust, moss and soil. The seedling is transplanted into a separate pot filled with nutritious soil.

Care

Regular irrigation using settled, rain or melt water, you can also use river water. Compliance with the recommended regimen is mandatory. It is impossible to overmoisten and allow the soil to dry out in a pot. The quantity and quality of watering depends on the temperature and humidity of the room, as well as on the age of the plant and the pot used for growing it.

It is also necessary to regularly spray the tree, because this procedure reduces the evaporation of water from the leaves, which is important for the normal functioning of the root system. Top dressing of pomelo is carried out during the period of active growth, and especially during flowering and fruiting. In addition to complex mineral fertilizers, it is recommended to add macronutrients such as iron, magnesium, sulfur, calcium, etc.