Well, I'm on my way to loosing all of the leaves on my Avocado tree and many leaves on my lemon tree. Except for the smaller trees that I was able to protect from the frost, all of the trees look awful , so I went online searching for what I should do next to care for the trees if there is any life left in them. I found the following website for avocados, but I thought a lot of it would apply to citrus as well. Maybe the citrus gurus can confirm this. (http://ceventura.ucdavis.edu/ben/avo_handbook/frost/methods.htm).

Phillip

With the citrus tree's. Wait until you see new growth, then determine where to prune off the dead wood. May take a few weeks to a few months, but I would not prune until you see where the new growth is emerging from.

You do not need to wait until the shoots are 2-3 ft long. The new shoots will indicate where the good wood is.

Citruses, bananas, avocadoes, bougainvilleas, guavas, etc., and even my annuals. The general rule is to never remove any frost damaged part during the entire winter, no matter how ugly they will look, control the urge to clean up the dead leaves. These dead leaves and stems serve as very good natural frost blankets protecting your trees from further damage during the entire winter and frosty days of spring. (Take out your snipping urges on your apples, pears and plums, But even then they require some timing too.)

Then in spring or when there is no more frosts in the forecast, at least in the 10-day forecast (weather.com) for your area, that will be the time I prune off the obviously dead stems and leaves of my citruses, avocadoes, guavas, bougainvilleas. For my annuals, that is the time to chop the entire dead plants to near ground level. For bananas, never chop off the top part of the trunk, just cut off each dead leaf from the base of their petioles, and remove the dead outer sheaths of the pseudostems to expose the green part. This helps to maximize photosynthesis and recovery.

In the slack time during the summer, that will be the time to remove the dead portions you missed earlier on in spring time.

Dauben, What varieties of avocados/citrus do you have? How cold did it get at your house? I am a little surprised to hear about 'frost' in San Diego. You must be in the hills to the east???
Greg

YIKES! I Got a Stuart Mexicola for the University of British Columbia - the plant is much smaller than yours and it survived (so far) a November 06 freeze
where the temperature dipped to 10f for a brief time. It lost 50% of its leaves
and pulled through better than your Fuerte. They did not protect the tree at all
(which was disapointed me) My Mexicola Grande and Stuart are overwintered in my garage for now. Keep us informed as to if and how they recover. I live WAY away from the citrus and avocado belt of California . I have been told that the Eureka lemon doesnt do well in the cold. I have cousins in Mission Viejo CA - I should see how their lemons faired...
Good luck on the recovery!
Greg

It's amazing what a few degrees can do. I live in Carmel Valley which is in San Diego. I am at an elevation of 384 ft. 2.5 miles from the ocean. I got down to 29F 2 nights out of 4. The other 2 were at 34F. Their was no damage at all to my key lime, bearss lime or myer lemon. The myers are more cold hardy than the others but the key lime is about at cold sensitive as it gets for citrus. My mango, which is flushing, had no damage as well.

Keiffer Lime and Pink Variegated Lemon are losing all their leave...Don't know yet the extent of the damage. All other varieties did quite well...without any protection !!!

To be honest, the Keiffer was more of a novelty....did not do much with the fruit, except use to freshen up the garbage disposal....

I've got a nice Page Manadarin in 15 gallon waiting to jump into the place...if the Lime doesn't make it....

We got a lot worse low temperature (duration and value) than EZ, but none of my citruses have lost their leaves, except for a few branches on the top canopy that were not covered.

EZ, your Keiffer lime has not a single leaf lost. But then again, the grafted branches grew only about 6 inches from last summer's bark grafts. They are well protected by the Oro Blancos then by the Satsumas on the top. They have like three layers of blankets on my 50-n-1 tree.