Citrus Growers Forum

karpes · Posted: Wed 26 Dec, 2007 5:16 pm

My Washington Navel is sprouting flowers and although I have seen this before, it puzzles me as to why this happens.
Dont misunderstand its just a few flowers but enough to make me feel like I have the dumbest tree one could possible have.
Question is, should i pluck the flowers or just let them fall off after the next cold snap. Does the presence of flowers now cause fewer flowers in the spring when this confused tree should be flowering?
Karl

bencelest · Posted: Wed 26 Dec, 2007 7:11 pm

Karl:
I have the same problem with my citrus.
Most of my citrus are flowering now.
EZ's oroblanco, Joe's clemenule, midkniight valencia, you name it. Luckily I don't want them to flower so I am plucking them all up except Joe's clemenule.

Jim&Beck · Joined: 19 Nov 2007 Posts: 18 Location: Bear Creek, AL

This may be a dumb question...but dont some citrus flower again before this seasons fruit is ripe? Seems I heard that some fruit took 15 mos. & would be in flower at the same time.

Jim

_________________
Bear Creek???...no, you can't get here from there!! Why would you want to anyway?

buddinman · Posted: Fri 28 Dec, 2007 1:04 pm

In SE Texas grapefruit and round oranges will invariably be in full bloom about the middle of February. We normally get a heavy frost after the middle of february so most of the production is lost unless the plants are covered. In the spring of 2002 we had a light freeze and the trees on Swingle understock were froze to the ground in the Port Arthur Tx area.

JoeReal · Posted: Fri 28 Dec, 2007 2:09 pm

Jim&Beck wrote:

This may be a dumb question...but dont some citrus flower again before this seasons fruit is ripe? Seems I heard that some fruit took 15 mos. & would be in flower at the same time.

Jim

Not a dumb question at all. Actually many citruses do. Examples here in my yard are Calamondins, grapefruits, pummelos and lemons. And depending upon the physical (climatic primarily, or how you controlled weather inside greenhouses) environment, it could happen also to mandarins, oranges, navels.

With my navels, Valencias, and sometimes Clementines, I do get second batches even third batches of blooms. But it is the spring blooms that really matters, these become the prime quality crops. The other bloom times produces low quality fruits and am tinkering about how to improve the quality of those off-season fruits.

Of particular interest to me is that some of my off-season fruits are practically seedless, even the mandarinquats and Calamondins. And to think that it would be a challenge as most of my different cultivars have flowers that are practically kissing each other in close proximity, and this translates to extreme seediness of some cultivars when they bloom during spring, but seedlessness if off season. I will take better note next year.

So the presence of blooms, ripening fruits, green fruits at the same time is not really uncommon if you have different cultivars and types of citruses. Especially when they're grafted together, I can assure you that you can have fresh citrus fruits the whole year on that tree, green fruits, and fowers.