The Tropical Fruit Forum

Quote from: EricSC on June 09, 2021, 02:00:01 AM

Can I cut citrus leafminer damaged leaves?

You can cut them off, if there are not too many of them. But keep in mind you will probably still have to give the tree a spray treatment.

It's debatable whether cutting off the leaves will really help. The deformed leaves can still be somewhat functional for the tree, but they may contain larvae inside of the leaves. The larva will hatch out of the leaves in about 25 to 30 days, and if the leaves have been saturated in spinosad spray at the time they emerge out, they should die. So there is not necessarily a need to remove the leaf.

The main treatment involves making sure the small newly formed leaves are sprayed, to prevent new leaves from becoming infested, because leaf miners prefer to lay their eggs in the smaller newer leaves.

My experience is that once the leaves start to curl, the miner is no longer in the leaf, it having pupated.  So, removing the leaf seems counterproductive to CLM control and limits the trees ability to produce its food. 

How many psyllids does it take to infect a tree with HLB?  One bite from 1 psyllid? Or does it take numerous psyllids to infect a tree?

I have never thought about this before, but how does a plant exhibit its host immunity?  Animals have T-cells, antibodies and utilize metabolic approaches such as fever, mucous secretions and such.  What systems do plants have to ward off infections? 

Hard to tell from the picture.  Snail eggs? They can be laid in a gelatinous mass like that.

I always feel hesitant to buy Tangelos from grocery store as the fruits are so much smaller than those from my tree. See pictures.

They always seem to put smaller fruits in those bags. 

Every mineola tangelo I have ever tried from the store has been delicious.  I am surprised to hear the quality varies so much. I was thinking on planting one since I enjoy them so much  Only dekopon was better, i feel.

They are too vigorous for me... I ordered a Lisbon so I could graft it onto flying dragon to keep it small.  I can't eat a million lemons.

My motto is 'most foods can be improved with the addition of lemon'.  I go through a lemon per day, sometimes more. 

Quote from: Galatians522 on March 23, 2021, 11:03:05 PM

I finally got the pictures to load to a size that I could actually see. I noticed that the yellow blotches do not create a mirror image on either side of the mid vein as would be typical of a nutritional issue. This condition is known as blotchy mottle and is one of the early symptoms of HLB (citrus greening). I highly suspect that your tree has it even though it is not common in California to my knowledge.

There is no known cases of citrus greening disease in this part of California yet.  If it really the disease as you suspected, could it be from the seed grown?  I bought the fruits from supermarket, saved and planted the seeds.

Cut a fruit from the stem end down the middle to the flower end.  If the mid-rib part curves, that is a classic symptom of HLB. Citrus should be symmetrical and if the flower end is off-center from the stem end when cut down the middle it's a pretty good sign of HLB.   

My grafted moro was a slow to produce as well. It was a grafted tree and in the ground 5 years before it produced fruit. Got ample sun and fertilizer but wouldn't flower much.  When it did begin producing is was susceptible to alternates bearing. Not sure my low biuret regimen (sprayed early to mid January) seemed to help a whole lot with quantity, but seemed to lessen extreme alternate bearing tendency.  It didn't start producing good crops until it got fairly large, like 8 feet tall by 6 feet wide.
Sadly, its dead now, victim to temps in the low teens to mid 20's for over 60 hours in mid february. Was planted in 2009, first decent crop in 2014, 2015 nothing, a few more in 2016, 2017 a low crop year, but 2018-2020 were pretty good. 

 

Yorgos, the Shiranui tree would be OK, but the Minneola tree grows much taller that 10-feet.

Thanks Millet.  Now to find one...

Good question.  Are you in the upper Texas coastal HLB quarantine zone?

This sounds like a variation of an orange julius.  Or a creamsicle!

They all taste dry and lack that certain je ne sais quoi. My 10 year old chandler is now in the compost because the fruit was pathetic, though of an impressive size to be sure. Was productive too.  But who wants a productive, dry, tasteless fruit?  Ujukitsu will be similarly 86’d.