I read somewhere that we shouldn't plant any citrus trees next to figs. Is there any reason for this?

Maybe citrus likes more compost and citrus vs figs just look at the price lol.

I hope there's nothing to that....if you look in my sunroom there's nothing but citrus and figs filling it up!  Those two are my number 1 and 2 hobbies!

In the growing season citrus likes to be dry between waterings, a fig not much so.

Greg,

Do you much different for your potting soil when it comes to citrus? My Meyer Lemon has never been happy. I used Ocean Forest Floor the first few years, I switched to gritty mix this year. In another year or two I may try my fig tree mix. I like the gritty because it doesn't harbor fungus gnats to spread to my winter cuttings/starters. If the gritty doesn't come around I guess I'll just have to wait until I am done messing with baby fig trees before I go back to something closer to soil.

Sometimes I wonder if it's just our dry air?

I have both growing next to each other and they are doing fine.  As mentioned above, citrus generally have lower watering requirements than figs.  But I give them the same amount of water and both are happy.  I tend to be conservative with how much water I give to the figs, which is probably why it works out well for the citrus.

Norhayati,
Sorry I'm not trying to hijack your thread. This sort of has something to do with citrus-vs-fig.  :)


Tylt33,

Thanks for your input. I fertilize with Grow More Citrus 20-10-15 when the tree is inside the sun room or house, maybe 3-4 times during the cold season. When the tree is outside it gets fertilized with the same diluted hydro-organic I use on my fig trees every week or two. Only difference is sometimes I skip the lemon tree because it just doesn't grow much. The leaves are almost always lightly green or yellow colored, but they don't seem to green up following a feeding like any other plant would. The failure to react to a feeding makes me think it is something else, unless citrus like heavy feeding..I don't know, but the leave coloration looks like a plant that is nitrogen or nutrient deficient.

The tree does flower heavily 2-3x/yr, but sets few lemons. It drives me crazy, I'm good at growing everything but this tree(I have never had any other citrus trees).
A little more info on this tree. When I switched the growing medium to gritty last fall, the root system was sparse and weak. About half way through this summer I downsized the tree to a smaller pot because I wanted the bigger nicer pot it was in for one of my fig trees which would surely put that pot to good use. When I made this switch, the lemons root system had made a massive improvement and looked thicker and healthier, but not root bound(even though the foliage was still weak).

I left the tree out probably a bit longer than I should have and think I got some leaf drop and extra yellowing because of that, but still..overall the greenest leaves look about like this year round.

A couple of different things could be going on with your tree:

1. You could still have an over watering issue, since your plant is in a saucer (I'm assuming to keep the floor clean), it has the potential to keep your perched water table too high, essentially drowning your roots.  Al recommends the use of a "wick" with his gritty mix, could be worth looking into.  I water most of my potted citrus (in gritty) once weekly all summer long, unless we have a week of sustained 100+ degree weather and things start looking sad.  They really do like to have mostly dry feet before being watered again.

2. It could be a micronutrient deficiency.  Other than the standard NPK, citrus need a lot of other goodies like magnesium and calcium.  The most popular all-inclusive citrus fertilizers are Foliage Pro, Osmocote+, and Jack's.  You are correct, citrus are heavy nitrogen feeders.  A lot of people will do 3:1:2 NPK for all of their plants but 5:1:2 NPK for citrus during growing season.  I've had good luck watering weekly with Foliage Pro 2 tsp/gallon (I grow ~30 citrus trees).

Just my .02, hope it helps.

Tyltt3,

Thanks! That is helpful. It's not perched water (at least in the gritty, Forest Floor could have had that issue), the pot sits on either bricks or stepping stones when outside, and the indoor saucer dries out in less than a day when I water. It sounds like a do water it too often though, at least in the summer, so I'll try holding back a bit more.

Based off of your input, I guess I have to listen to what my plants leaves have been telling me all along and give it more nitrogen.

I am glad that it has nothing to do with pests. I grow my citrus together with figs. My lemon are doing well. The thing I learnt from a nursery owner is that they need full sun if they want to fruit. As for my figs they are still very small. Thanks for the advice.

Root prune and up pot the lemon. Looks to me like it could be root bound.

I think they say to keep citrus and figs away from each other as they can get the same illnesses from each othe fmv I think may be one or somthing like it. Don't quote me on that but I think that's why. Read it somewhere just don't recall where.

Citrus are heavy feeders, so planting in ground next to figs might be an issue, planted in pots like most of us probably do shouldn't be an issue. Whoever is saying not to plant next to each other is likely thinking about that. In a gritty mix there is no need to water differently, at least that's my experience.

Been growing them together for years with no problems...... 

I always have had problems with citrus, especially over winter, their leaves always would yellow, it was too cold on their roots and couldn't take up iron or manganese and it would cause yellowing, I started this year using all purpose miracle grow and they turned around right away.  The all purpose has iron and manganese in it, I must not have been putting enough iron chelate (6%) or manganese chelate (12%) or something but they are growing fine in the basement for the winter now.  We will see how they go over the winter now.  Normally I just ignore them until they are light in the pot, not just a little light but quite light, this seems to cut down on most problems, summer time they may need to be watered every few days but winter it may be 3 weeks.