With the 19F freeze here last winter, my orange and grapefruit trees defoliated. I've got an OK grapefruit crop but almost no navel or blood oranges. My large Page mandarin has a sparse crop of dry fruit. Clementine and Fairchild mandarin crop is almost none. Satsuma crop is also very low and nothing but puffy inedible fruit. This is on 10 year old trees. I'm getting lots of fruit dropping and bad damage from leaf footed bugs. I'll be buying satsuma fruit this year for sure. Like a plague of locusts, the black birds pecked on every fruit out there when they were nickel sized!! Nice crop of about 20 gallons of changshou kumquats - lots of marmalaide to come!

Anyone else having this bad luck in SE Texas/SW Louisiana?

When the temp drops to 19 degrees F. or lower a poor harvest can be expected. This I learned from Fletcher Granbury, DeRidder Louisiana way back in 1969.

In south Georgia our crop is very low. Some trees have no fruit while others may have about 10% of a normal crop. Even in the greenhouse the crop is the same, I dont understand it, one Valencia tree has few leaves although it is starting to have some new growth and these are well established trees. I feel your pain!

MrTexas,

I am having my first ever crop of kumquats and limequats on my container trees. I have found a few recipes for marmalaide that seem a little strange to me. Soaking the kumquats over night. Is this normal procedure? Do you care to share your recipe?

TIA
cindy

My trees have fruited very little this year as well, but mine are due to a lack of flowering in the initial spring flush (and high vegetative growth) rather than poor fruit set.

Most of my trees are on the young side, so I do not mind so much, as long as this does not become a trend!

Hershell, trees grown outside can be heavily influenced by the local weather conditions during the growing season. However, healthy citrus trees grown in a greenhouse, where the temperatures are controlled, normally should, more or less, always have good production, unless it is a variety that is affected by alternate bearing. - Millet (788-)

I have a Browns Select satsuma that has at least 350 fruit. I picked over 70 already and there is still at least hundreds more. Some of the fruit has been ruined by brown rot from the rain, but most of it is not damaged and still on the plant. This tree produced few fruit last year. The satsuma that produced over 500 fruit last year has only about 30 this year. I have another Owari satsuma that has over 100 fruit this year and last year produced 300.

The meyer lemons have less fruit this year but still very good production.
This year I used scare tape to prevent the black birds from pecking the fruit and it works!

Overall I have fewer fruit this year because two of three plants had big production last year and much less this year, but the one that produced little last year has a bumper crop this year.

there is a Meyer lemon tree over at a neighbors at my sister's house. i have helped myself to the fruit that hangs over the fence usually there are a lot of fruit but this year there is virtually none. the Meyer tree that i gave my sister had it's best year yet. her tree is in a pot and was protected during the cold spells last winter. the tree is still small but produced ~ 50 fruit.

I harvested 151 meyer lemons on Sunday and there are still at least 35 left on a small in ground tree. The larger meyer lemon plant has at least 300 maybe even 500. I only need about 250 meyer lemon fruit for my needs the rest I give away. This is still about 35 percent below the average. The Brown Select satsuma had a great year with 296 fruit harvested so far and still 150 to 250 remaining on the plant.

This years production is not that bad eventhough it is below average overall.

I have been making citrus marmalade for a number of years and have never had to use commercial pectin. I cut up a variety of things (such as calamondins, limequats, kumquats, Page peel), add two cups of water and bring them to a boil and simmer for about 20 minutes. Cover and let stand over night. You do not need to refrigerate it.

The next day I again bring the stuff to a boil and for every 8 cups of cut up fruit, I add 5 pounds of sugar. Slowly bring it to a boil and let it simmer until the temperature reaches 226F. I never bother to skim the foam off as that has a lot of flavor in it.

I take a number of clean mason jars and run them through the dishwasher and only take them out when I finish the boiling.

Once it reaches 226F I take it off the heat and using clean mason jars I bottle it, then process it in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

It ALWAYS sets up! So far, I have never had a failure.