My Orange trees have been inground now for about 2 months but it's only now that I am seeing any new growth on one of the trees. The other tree is not showing any new growth at all.

I know that the trees were initially water stressed (excess water) and had also over borne flowers/young fruit all of which dropped due to overbearing and high winds. I am actively trying to address the water stress issue by watering less frequently and focusing on keeping the rootball area moist and skipping the surrounding area on alternate watering cycles as the rest has a lot of compost in it already and usually holds moisture well (too well probably)

The tree leaves though are on the dry side and are a bit curled up for quite some time now. Never ever had a single leaf that was flat and glossy since I planted the trees. One of the trees is also giving up leaves on the wind side as well with the tree appearing "barren" on one side. Lot of fallen fruit as well, partly because of young age of the tree and over bearing the rest because of less vogour and wind.

It seems I am having a severe wind problem increasing the transpiration and since the roots are probably not that well established, the trees are heavily stressed

I have beeing thinking about installing artificial windbreaks and have the following ideas in mind..

Some kinda screen (thick plastic or landscape fabric) on 3 poles forming a triangle at 60 degrees installed on the windside (west).


My concern is thast the plastic sheeting may not hold up and will block all of the wind unless I tear holes in it (further decreasing it's strength). It could impact the microclimate with an increase in temperature.

The landscape fabric might work on the other hand and will only block late evening sun a bit. The plants should still get morning, afternoon and early evening light. I am inclines towards using this.

Anyone tried this? Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Dinesh

The trick is that you have to accept the fact that you could not stop the wind but you can slow it down. There is no cost effective wind break for such scenario of reducing its windspeed to zero.

The best wind breaks allow some porosity. Based on what I have learned from various micrometeorological classes is that between 25% to 40% porosity is desirable to reduce the speed of the wind. If you have 0% porosity, the wind breaks next to the plant will only enhance eddies and turbulence, thereby worsening evapotranspiration demands that can stress out your supposedly protected trees.

Another trick is that, if you can't stop the wind, no one can stop you from diverting it. So you can also design your barriers so as to divert the wind away from your trees. This will utilize several staggered barriers upwind of your trees, designed to divert the wind.