http://jacksonville.com/sports/outdoors/2010-01-02/story/gardening_clay_citrus_can_stress_out_in_wet_spells
Gardening Clay: Citrus can stress out in wet spells
* By Raymond H. Zerba Jr.
* Story updated at 3:51 PM on Thursday, Dec. 31, 2009
Provided by Raymond Zerba
Physiological stress, especially following wet
summers, causes citrus to split on the tree.
One of our readers called this week about citrus splitting open on the tree and wondered if all the fruit might do this. No worry though. Here's why:
This condition is traceable to physiological stress, especially when the summer has been wet. Excess water pressure forces the citrus rind to separate or split from the stem end of the fruit all the way to the blossom end and into the center of the fruit.
The cause is not fully understood. What is known is that trees near a hard surface, such as a roof, patio or driveway that receives lots of rain runoff, seem to have more fruit split.
Trees over septic tank drainfields suffer from this problem, as well as those grown on shadier sites.
Usually fruit split correlates with years of extended wet spells followed by dry weather. We just went through a little of that. Before the fruit enlarges, its skin becomes very tough due to the heat and dry conditions. Then when rains suddenly come, the skin cannot expand as the interior part of the fruit fills with water.
Last year was worse for this than this year. It does not affect all the fruit on the tree and there is little one can do about it. Trees with low secondary elements such as copper, zinc, boron, molybdenum, iron and manganese seem more prone to splitting in bad years.
Speaking of harvesting citrus fruit, each year I see trees where people have picked all the fruit they want and just leave the rest on the tree. The fruit becomes overripe and falls to the ground - what a real waste of good food!
The UF/IFAS Clay County Master Gardener Volunteers are offering this year to come to your house and collect any extra citrus you do not want and deliver it to a local food distribution organization or church. If for some reason you cannot pick your fruit at all, for health or other reasons, and would like them to do it for you, they are willing to do that, too, as long as you live in Clay County.
When your fruit is ripe to the taste, call 269-6355 or 284-6355 and ask for Sally. Leave a message with a phone number and someone will get back to you. Churches or other Clay County organizations that want to "share in this harvest" may also call.
Charity begins at home, and it really is so wasteful to just let this fruit rot on the ground.
