I am a newbie here and I would like to thank you for allowing me to join this forum. After all of the nice things that Benny has said about the people here, I just had to become a member.
I live in New Iberia Louisiana and have a small orchard of 12 trees, three of which are four years old.
I have become more interested (more like obsessed) with citrus over the past couple of years and now my biggest concern is keeping them alive during a freeze. Granted it does not often get very cold here but the thought of loosing all of them in one night has me searching for a solution. I am sure you, as well as all of the citrus industry share this concern.
This year I installed an irrigation system and built risers 30 above the ground for each tree, with micro-sprayers. The problem is that there are conflicting opinions about just how much GPH of water per tree is required. I have sized these micro-sprinklers to apply 22 GPH at 35 psi. Do you feel that this would be adequate to save the trunk up to the 30 height? In my lifetime, I have only seen the temperatures get below 10 degrees on two occasions. I would say that a normal hard freeze for this area would be around 20 degrees and this does not happen very often. Maybe I am going too far with this freeze protection, because I realize that if the water source is interrupted during the freeze, it would be worst than if it had not been used at all.
What do you guys think and please share what you do about the occasional freeze.
Thanks Karl
