Mex limes and fruit setting issue - the good, bad & ugly

[Mark in Texas]

First the good - am picking handfuls of these limes from a small potted thorny tree, have been for months.



The bad - have an 8' H thornless Mex lime in a large RootBuilder pot that is notorious for going thru the same drill every year about this time (it's cold now).  Sets hundreds of blooms and fruit while leaves simultaneously drop then being almost leafless the fruit drops due to a lack of carbos, etc. and the tree stays dormant until spring.  If it set fruit AND pushed new foliage everything would be fine.

i have a few tweeks planned due to low light for the section it's under.  This time of the year it gets very little strong light due to a rather dark roof covering (Palram SolarSoft 85), which will be fixed come spring by changing over to a clear in this section of the roof.  Nexus Zephyr greenhouse.

[Pancrazio]

I can't help, but I'm searching too for a solution: i have a similar problem with Corsican citrons. Bought it two years ago, no growth: just flowers. Of course, since the plants are really small, they drop as soon as they finish the flowering, but they aren't followed by growth flush. I water and fertilize them as any other citrus. Next spring, same behavior.

You have given me an idea, actually: my plants are rooted cutting in a big pot. Maybe the pot size may have some role in this? Common sense would suggest "no"; but this is the most obvious thing our plant have in common.

[Mark in Texas]

I think it might be a case of genetics or perhaps both.  I'm now storing and pumping water from a black garbage can sitting inside the greenhouse where the water temps are above 70F.   We'll see what happens.......

[mrtexas]

Dropping leaves is from not enough light. Thornless mex lime do not bear much fruit.

[Mark in Texas]

Dropping leaves is from not enough light. Thornless mex lime do not bear much fruit.

That's what I was thinking too, reason why I'm changing out that roofing in the spring.  Branches are also stretching which indicates low light.

Bearing?  It's the heaviest bearing limes I've ever seen.  Trick is leaf output to support the hundreds of limes after bloom.  When it blooms, usually twice a year, the tree is literally white with blooms, hundreds and hundreds of them.