Hi. I've read a bit about plants and I read about hormones in plants, of which two are very important (and their ratio): cytokinins and auxins. Auxins are contained in the top of a limb and if you remove the top of a limb it starts to put out new growth out of its sides. And an increase of cytokinins in a plant can stimulate the division of meristemic cells therefore triggering a new flush.
I'm not sure, but I believe it's similar in citrus plants?
Anyways, I've also read that a lot of cytokinins are contained in coconut water. So I was wondering what would happen if you sprayed a citrus plant with coconut water (probably dilute). Would it trigger new growth?

I may actually try spraying one of my trees, that is pretty desperate, with, say, 1:10 diluted coconut water... Anyone else care to try this ?

Would the point of this be to trigger more flushing per year or earlier/later in the year? I would imagine you could loose fruit that where on the tree if you where encouraging leafy growth. Or would this help a new tree grow faster/ reach maturity faster? please let us know what you find with this experiment, it is rather interesting.

Well, I guess in my case the point would be to trigger to grow new leaves a poor meyer lemon that has severe spider mite damage and not too many leaves . But I'm not sure if I'm going to try it now, because I'm hoping that that tree will start growing on it's own, because it bloomed recently so it should (hopefully) start a new flush soon. It has healthy roots and definitely more than needed to support the poor canopy...
If it doesn't start flushing say after a month, when it's outside I might try this out of desperation. For now I'm just going to prune the ends of branches (therefore remove auxins which means an increase in cytokinins which then should give a new flush).
But if spraying would work, it would be a very good way to get more growing flushes in areas where the season is very short. Because citrus tend to rest between flushes, and it would be great if you could just spray it and cause it to immediately put out new leaves. It would be very nice in a short season outside (say from middle of May till middle of Sept.) to get 3-4 flushes instead of just 2-3, because the leaves on citrus grow much nicer outside compared to indoors. But I guess it's only possible in a perfect world .

On a side note: has anyone noticed that it's hard for citrus to adapt back from being grown under artificial lighting? This meyer lemon is my third citrus that is not feeling so good after artificial lighting, before it there were two limequats that are out in the trash now...

This is a very interesting experiment. Will you use fresh coconut water or from a tin? I might try this myself and see what happens, unless someone can tell us if the coconut water would harm citrus in any way...

Five or six year ago I planted a small young Marisol Clementine in the ground inside the greenhouse. I heated the soil that the tree was growing in with heating cables, keeping the root zone between 80-83F (27-29C). A HD lamp was used to light the tree from sun down to 10:00 - 10:30 PM. This procedure was done every day for three years Each year the tree produced five flushes of new growth, approximately one new flush every 2.5 months. By lighting and heating the tree daily, the tree produced 15 flushes during the period instead of the normal 6 flushes that it would have produced without the treatment.

I recently planted a rather small Xie Shan Satsuma in the ground, and will be doing the same cultivation with it. NOTE: I live in Colorado a very cold US state during the winter months. - Millet (286 BO-)

Evaldus, during the summer months EVERYONE'S trees put out new flushes. How about the winter months? h How many flushes did your unheated and non lit tree produce during the winter months? - Millet