For as long as I can remember, Nectarine has been a mainstay of my kitchen. If I am not cooking beef, chicken or pork, I will be preparing and cooking dishes with the delightful citrus fruit. My family and I enjoy every minute of fresh squeezed lemonade or eat the sweet, juicy little tangerines that grow in my garden. So when I found out that there was a new baby citrus plant, I was thrilled. Unfortunately, the new baby did not stay in the house long, so Nectarine was sent to the nursery to grow until I was able to get back home.
As it turned out, Nectarine would probably be better off being a houseplant than a plant that could grow up to three feet tall. The reason I say this is because it takes a lot of work to keep a plant from growing to a height that it can no longer support. Nectarine would require six to twelve inches of elevation for it to grow happily. This is easily done, however, by simply following the grow instructions for this wonderful citrus fruit.
To follow these grow instructions, I placed a stake in the ground beneath my house. Since I live on a major street, this was a convenient location. After digging a hole, I wrapped a loose blanket around it. Over the next few days, the soil was packed full of compost as well as bleach and other chemicals to kill any weeds. Once this was complete, I placed the Nectarine pots in the hole. This worked quite well, and I didn’t have to do anything else to prepare the soil for the Nectarine to grow in.
What I did need to do, however, was to make sure that the soil was not wet when I put the Nectarine pots in. This is easily done by simply taking a rain check, measuring your soil pressure, and watering the plant with a hose. The Nectarine should grow quite well in a couple of years. Now, I had two growing plants and no vegetables. How could this be? What was wrong?
It was nothing but soil issues. My soil was too low in nutrients. This is a problem most people encounter as they grow up. I knew that I needed to add some fertilizer, but I didn’t know how much. When I tried to calculate how much I would need, I came up short.
So, I gathered up some garden compost, some bleach and some water, and began my first batch of the stuff. This did help a bit. However, after about a month, I saw that two of my three seedlings had withered away. I guess it took a little more than my instructions to kill them off, but the rest of them just died.