It’s so easy to love grapefruit! With they’re dark, shiny leaves and bright, long-hanging fruit, different types of grapefruit trees make beautiful specimens in a home garden or anywhere. Plus, grapefruits are delicious and highly nutritious. But there’s one drawback…as tropical plants, lots of sunlight is needed for any standard or dwarf grapefruit tree to thrive. Grapefruit trees varieties of every kind – be it a white or ruby grapefruit tree, or even a pink grapefruit tree – are best suited for growing in the ground in USDA plant hardiness zones 9 and up. So if you’re dream is to one day wake up and pluck a grapefruit off your own tree for that morning’s breakfast, you’re going to need to choose your planting and growing location and cultivars carefully.
Growing a grapefruit tree.
A grapefruit tree needs a lot of heat during the growing season. Lemon trees, lime tress, and other citrus trees don’t need quite as much heat as a sweet grapefruit tree, which depends on heat for its sweetness. This sensitivity to cold makes grapefruit tree care problematic even to gardens in the appropriate growing zones should there be a prolonged freeze. Ensuring trees keep warm strengthens them for fighting grapefruit tree diseases, as well. No matter where you live, if you’re looking to keep your grapefruit “orchard” small, you may want to consider getting a dwarf grapefruit tree.
Advantages of keeping dwarf grapefruit trees.
What makes a dwarf grapefruit so unique is its size. Dwarf grapefruit tree size tends to cap out at 12 feet maximum when mature. Rio red grapefruit trees and other varieties can be planted in the ground, but also do well in large pots, which means you can keep them indoors at least part of the time. Best of all, in a portable pot you can move your grapefruit tree to follow the sunlight!
Types of dwarf grapefruit trees for sale.
You don’t have to give up your favorite grapefruit variety by going with a dwarf tree – the citrus tree may be smaller, but its fruit is the same size as that grown on a full-sized tree. Ruby red grapefruit trees, which produce sugar-sweet fruit with a lovely red flesh, can be very particular about the soil they grow in, which makes going with a dwarf ruby red grapefruit tree even more an advantage as you’ll have great control over its soil. The maximum ruby red grapefruit tree size is anywhere from10 to 13 feet tall when grown outdoors, but with careful pruning the dwarf variety can stay at 3 to 4 feet, making it ideal to keep indoors.
In addition to looking for dwarf ruby red grapefruit trees for sale, you may want to consider a dwarf Rio red grapefruit tree. A relative newcomer to the citrus world, the Rio red grapefruit is an offshoot of the ruby red grapefruit, even sweeter, and more winter hardy. Available in dwarf and semi-dwarf varieties, it’s a beautiful addition to a sunroom or indoor arboretum.
