Hi,
I have a big problem with my citrus trees. Many of them have fruits, but they are not as big as they should be. Why? Have you got any ideas?
Trees are fertilized, unless I forget about it. Minerals should not be missed. Throughout the winter the trees have temperatures about 10 degrees of Celsius (50 degrees of Fahrenheit)
For example, I add pictures of my Cleopatra mandarin fruits, which are only 3,5 cm in diameter (1,38 of inches), but they should be bigger.


Thanks, Radek!

small trees make small fruit. As the trees get older they should start making larger fruit.
I think this is normal of most types of fruit trees.

They look just about the right size for Cleopatra fruit, what size were you aiming for?? We used to see a lot of old Cleo rootstock trees around here, 3.5 cm about average. They tend to get puffy with age,hanging on the tree. How old are your fruit there?

Thanks cristofre. I have a big lemon Feminello who is 10 years old and also has a small fruit. When I bought this tree it had bigger fruit than now.
Does the climate may have an impact on it? Maybe I should make special treatment?

edit:
I was thinking that they should have a diameter of 4.5-6 cm. (like on picture at the bottom). I know that the fruit will still grow and become more plump until they will be ripened.
http://users.kymp.net/citruspages/cleopatra-tamu.jpg

If you have not flushed your tree's containers in some time, and the EC (TDS) in the medium has build up to high levels, this will result in small size fruit and especially in the growth reduction of the tree itself. The fruit on citrus trees draws all of it energy for growth from only the three or four closest leaves to the fruit. Therefore, if you reduce the amount of fruit to one fruit for every three leaves the fruit will be larger. This is commonly done by growers that intent to take fruit to the Citrus Expo judging contest, plus many growers also coat their fruit with vegetable oil to enhance the fruits looks. In my collection, I have both large and small sized trees, and the smaller container tree's produce regular full size fruit particular to the cultivar. - Millet (327 ABo-)

Topic Effects of Climate on Citruses gives information of general type.

Sorta like Millet said, I know a citrus grower that limits fruit to only one fruit per cluster. It seems to work very well and all his citrus is grafted on dwarfing rootstock. He is tha best grower in Alabama and has been a judge in our contest ......Tom

Agree with removing fruit to increase size but there may be more affecting the poster. If you have a short summer, say bloom in late march and winter comes in October your fruit will have less growth time then normal, this will reduce fruit size too. very large fruit are normally grown in hot climates with short winters, bloom time comes sooner and winter in is December, fruit gets larger. On another note, the eating quality should not be effected.

You have taste the fruits, the rind isn't sweet? It looks to be a Calamondin.

I had tasted them and they were not sweet. But leafs of my tree looks just like leafs of Cleopatra mandarin. I have got branch from my friend and i have grafted it on rootstock. He was sure that it was Cleopatra tree, because he bought it from proffesional citrus store.
Any others suggestions?

The size of cleopatra fruits:

From http://idtools.org/id/citrus/citrusid/factsheet.php?name=Cleopatra