Planting a Loquat Tree: Site, Frost Pockets and Grafted vs Seedling

Site the tree for the flowers, not the foliage

This is the one decision that separates a loquat that fruits from a loquat that is merely a good-looking evergreen. The tree flowers in late autumn and early winter and then carries small green fruit right through the coldest part of the year. The wood is tough down to around 12F (minus 11C) and the leaves shrug off frost entirely, but the open flowers are damaged near 26 to 28F (minus 3 to minus 2C) and the pea-sized young fruit is killed at much the same point. So the tree survives a hard winter looking magnificent while every fruit on it has been quietly destroyed.

That means you site a loquat the way you would site an early apricot: on the warmest ground you have. The south or west face of a house wall, a courtyard, the lee of a solid fence, a slope that sheds cold air downhill rather than collecting it. Radiated heat from masonry through a still, clear night is worth several degrees, and several degrees is exactly the margin between a set crop and a season of nothing. Avoid the low corner of the garden where mist settles and frost lingers into mid-morning. That is a frost pocket, and it is the worst place on the property for this tree.

If you have no warm spot and your winters routinely drop below the mid-twenties Fahrenheit, plant the tree anyway, but plant it for what it is: a handsome broadleaf evergreen with large ribbed leaves and scented winter flowers that will fruit in the occasional mild year. Growers in cool regions get a crop perhaps one year in three or four. Knowing that in advance is far better than nursing a grievance against the tree every spring.

Grafted or seedling: this is not a small difference

A loquat grown from a seed out of a fruit will germinate readily, grow fast and make a fine tree. It will also take six to ten years to flower, and when it does, the fruit is a lottery. Loquat does not come true from seed. The seedling may give you small, seedy, sharp fruit with almost no flesh, and you will have waited most of a decade to find that out. Seedlings are also generally larger, more upright trees that are harder to keep within reach.

A grafted tree flowers in its second or third year, gives you the fruit of a known selection, and is usually more compact. If your reason for planting is fruit rather than shade, buy grafted. The graft union is a visible swelling low on the trunk; keep it above the soil line when you plant, and rub off any shoot that comes from below it, because the rootstock will outgrow the scion given the chance.

There is one honest use for a seedling: as a rootstock, or as a large evergreen where the fruit is a bonus. If you already have a seedling in the ground and it has been sitting there for years without flowering, it is not sick. It is simply not old enough yet, and the only cure is time or a graft.

A seedling loquat that has never flowered after eight years is still worth keeping as a tree. You can graft two or three shoots of known fruiting wood onto its framework and get fruit within a couple of seasons on roots that are already established.

Soil, spacing and getting it in the ground

Loquat is unfussy about soil type and takes anything from sandy ground to moderately heavy loam across a pH range of roughly 6.0 to 8.0. What it will not take is standing water. Roots left saturated for days rot, and the first symptom is a general yellowing of a tree that had been growing well. On heavy or low ground, plant on a raised mound eight to twelve inches (20 to 30 cm) high rather than digging a pit that fills with water.

Give a standard tree fifteen to twenty-five feet (4.5 to 7.5 m) of space. That sounds generous for a young plant in a pot, but a happy loquat throws a dense, wide crown of very large leaves and shades out everything under it. On a dwarfing rootstock, or against a wall where you intend to keep it pruned flat, ten to twelve feet (3 to 3.7 m) is workable. In a container, use the largest pot you can move, at least twenty inches (50 cm) across, and expect to keep the tree at head height with annual pruning.

Plant when the ground is workable and the tree is not in active flush: the end of winter into early spring is ideal in most mild climates, and early autumn works where winters are gentle enough to allow root growth before cold. Avoid planting a young tree into the teeth of its first flowering season, because a newly planted loquat will often try to bloom before it has the roots to support anything.

1. Dig wide, not deep Make the hole two to three times the width of the rootball and no deeper than the rootball itself. Loquat roots run out sideways in the top eighteen inches (45 cm) of soil, and a tree set too deep settles further and suffers at the collar.
2. Backfill with the soil you removed Do not fill the hole with rich compost. That creates a soft pocket the roots refuse to leave, and in wet ground it acts as a sump. Break up the native soil, firm it back around the rootball, and put the organic matter on top as mulch instead.
3. Water it in properly once Soak the planting hole thoroughly to settle the soil against the roots and drive out air pockets. Then leave it alone until the top few inches dry, rather than watering a little every day.
4. Mulch, but keep the trunk clear Spread two to three inches (5 to 7 cm) of coarse mulch over the root zone out to the drip line, pulled back four inches (10 cm) from the trunk. Mulch touching the bark keeps it damp and invites collar rot.
5. Stake only if the site is windy A low stake for the first season is enough, and remove it after a year. A tree tied rigidly to a tall stake never builds trunk strength, and loquat carries a heavy head of leaves that needs a stem trained to hold it.

The first two years

A newly planted loquat spends its first season making roots and very little top growth, then accelerates sharply. Water it deeply once a week in dry weather through the first two summers, more often in a container, and keep a three-foot (1 m) circle around the trunk free of grass. Turf competing at the base slows a young tree more than most people expect.

Hold off on heavy feeding. A young loquat pushed hard with nitrogen makes long soft shoots that are the preferred entry point for fire blight and that will not carry flowers anyway. A light dressing of a balanced fertilizer in spring after growth starts is enough for the first two years.

If the tree sets flowers in its first autumn in the ground, strip them off. It is tempting to leave them, but a small tree that fruits early stalls its framework growth for a season, and the handful of fruit you get from a two-foot (60 cm) whip is not worth the year you lose.

Write down what you planted

Record the planting date, whether the tree is grafted or a seedling, and where the graft union sits relative to the soil. Photograph the trunk at planting. Two years later, when a vigorous shoot appears from low down, that record tells you immediately whether it is rootstock to be removed or a legitimate low branch to be trained.

Also note the compass orientation of the position and what shelters it. When you eventually compare a year when the crop set against a year when it did not, the difference is almost always the low temperature on a specific night during bloom or early fruit, and a note of where the tree sits in relation to walls and slopes makes that history readable.