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Master Gardener: Nursery citrus trees need time to mature

10:00 PM PST on Friday, January 22, 2010

By OTTILLIA 'TOOTS' BIER
Special to The Press-Enterprise

Q: A few years ago we planted a seed from a really delicious orange we bought at the farmers market. The seed has grown into a nice tree that is almost as tall as I am, but it still hasn't made any flowers or fruit. What can I do to get it to make fruit?

A: When you buy a citrus tree at the nursery, you are buying a budded (a form of grafting) tree. There are a number of reasons why citrus trees are budded and not grown from seed commercially. For example, the rootstock selected is more vigorous and disease resistant and the mature size of the tree can be regulated depending upon the rootstock selected. Possibly the most significant reason is because when citrus trees are grown from seed, they take a very long time to reach fruiting age.

The length of time it takes for a citrus seedling to pass from the juvenile non-fruiting stage to the mature fruiting stage varies from several years for the most precocious species to many, many years for others. While they are in this juvenile period, the trees tend to be very thorny, too, but as they approach maturity, the thorns diminish. If you detect a lessening of thorns in your tree's new growth, it may be reaching fruiting age.

A colleague who worked in citrus research at UC Riverside told me he had one Valencia orange seedling that still had not fruited after 20 years. Admittedly, that was the unusual, but 10 years to fruiting for an orange tree is not unusual. This can give you some sense of what you might expect.

You ask what to do, but I only have two possible answers. Unfortunately, my first answer is to continue to wait. If you are determined to enjoy this particular variety of orange, it is your only option. Happily, most orange trees grown from seed eventually produce true-to-type fruit, that is, it is identical to the mother tree, so your patience will be rewarded.

My second answer is to consider budding or grafting another variety onto the seedling tree. The bud wood is taken from a mature, fruiting tree of a desired variety, and the branches that grow from the propagating material produce fruit within a year or two. The budding technique is quite simple to perform and directions can be found all over the Internet.

Since citrus trees that are growing in the garden can only be budded during the summer months, not during the winter months as deciduous trees are, you have some time to think this over. Maybe this will be the spring your tree finally makes flowers and the problem will be resolved. Good luck.

Ottillia "Toots" Bier has been a master gardener since 1980.