I was lucky to move into a home with two mature citrus trees in the yard. I have some kind of orange tree and i think the other is a Lemon??? The orange tree is doing awesome. It's full of fruit to be picked soon. But the questionable lemon tree is not doing so well. I moved here almost 4 years ago and the "lemon" tree had only about 4 fruits on it then and i have never seen anything since. Can anyone tell me what might be going on? The tree is about 9-12 feet tall and the leaves are very green. It seems healthy??

I am eager to learn more about growing citrus and just bought a persian lime tree. Do i need to bring it in for the winter? When do they usually produce and harvest?

Is there any recommened literature out there for beginners like me?

Sorry...lots of questions but I am REALLY excited about it. Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

You may need to stress the healthy tree a little bit to coax it to bloom, and hopefully bear fruit. One way is to withhold watering until the tree shows a little bit sign of wilting (droopy branches or rolled leaves), then water regularly after that.

It could also be that the tree the previous year was overloaded with fruits, and it tends to bear alternately. So you may have few this year, but next year you would have overloaded fruits. The best control is to thin out the blooms when you have an over abundance of blooms which is a prelude to an overproductive year.


Welcome to the group!

The few pieced of fruit i saw was 4 years ago!!! Nothing since. I can't even remeber if it had blooms. (I know the orange tree did. It smelled wonderful!) Also, i have never watered the tree. It's planted in the back yard and gets only rain water. The orange tree i have is in the same area and has tons of fruit.

????

ooops, I did not read the fine print! I thought you just moved there, did not read the 4 years ago.

Anyway, if the tree is healthy, you can stress it out gently to coax it to bloom.

Another is that around February or just three weeks before the regular blooms in your area, apply a generous amount of ammonium sulfate mixed with 1/4 epsom salt. For example, you can mix 4 cups ammonium sulfate with 1 cup of epsom salt, then apply it around the tree and water it in.

These fertilizers will often help in the blooming and fruit sets.

To prevent fertilizer burns, I fertilize by mixing 1/2 cup ammonium sulfate and 2 tbsp epsom salt in 5 gallon bucket water and pour it around the drip line of my citrus trees, roses, avocadoes... Always had wonderful blooms.

Hello alyoopster,
The first two photos I believe are of a citrange or similar trifoliate orange hybrid-often used as rootstocks.The reason I say this is upon close inspection of your photos I can see that they have trifoliate leaves.It is likely that it will not be edible-or if edible it will likely be very sour with a strange flavor.When I attended the University of Florida we had several of them growing on campus-they made good baseball substitutes but the ones on campus were definitely not edible

Davidmac, thanks for pointing that out. I assumed that it was lemons.

You can really see the thorns in the second picture. How would you go about grafting a tree that size?

First two photos are of Swingle, most likely the rootstock took over. If you look at the first photo, at he base looks to be still some of the original citrus that was grafted to it. The tree in the third photo I would stake up with a very heavy stake to get it back in line.

Hello alyoopster,
You asked

Quote:

I am eager to learn more about growing citrus and just bought a persian lime tree. Do i need to bring it in for the winter?

Because you live in Destin (zone 8b) I would plant it in a large pot or half wooden barrel on a plant dolly so that you can roll it in and out with the weather.You can leave the persian lime out most of the winter-but bring it in when the temperature is forecast for the 20's or lower.Brandy over at Just Fruits and Exotics about an hour and a half drive away from you suggests some varieties that are proven performers in our area- http://www.justfruitsandexotics.com/Citrus.htm