The Tropical Fruit Forum

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This week is the time to foliar spray your citrus trees with low biuret urea.  Doing so will produce larger sized fruit.

I started the tree from seed 2 years ago.  This spring the tree is flowering for the first time at 20  inches tall.

My shikuwasha citrus tree, native of Okinawa, flowered with 2 flowers at just 9 inches tall. Grown from from seed.

n Australia what is the average summer daytime high temperature in the area where Finger Limes live in the wild?

In Colorado the temperatures are not high enough to sweeten white grapefruit as sweet as Florida grown fruit.  Therefore, I have continued to leave my Marsh grapefruit hang on the tree until the end of May.  Over the months I sampled a fruit every couple weeks.  And every couple weeks the fruit became a little sweeter.  Today, the 21 of May I ate two of the grapefruit and they were quite sweet.  I noticed that when I picked them they were also some what soft and  juicier .  Time heals all things.

Shikuwasa lime from Okinawa (actually a mandarin) but is always used as a lime.  I planted a Shikuwasa seed 4 months ago.  The plant is now 7 inches tall and has developed a bloom at the very apical point of the tree. 

I'm seeing some normal citrus leaf drop now that my trees are starting to flower.  Citrus leaf drop in citrus trees is at its highest just be for and during flowering.

Tomorrow is December 15, which is two and a half months before citrus flowering.  Therefore, tomorrow is the day to spay the foliage with the first urea spray to induce a better bloom, thus a better crop.  I did not spray last year and the crop was less than usual. 

https://www.abc.net.au/landline/citrus-greening:-protecting-australian-farms-from/13538552

I am trying a new growth medium  It is made from 50 percent Turface MVP and 50 percent potting soil.  It seems to have good
drainage and aeration.  I know that Brian, a member of this forum has been using it with good results.  I believe it was first invented by Laaz.  Although I have not been using it very long, so far so good.  Most of my trees are growing in a 5-1-1 bark peat and perlite mixture with good results, it has to be watered so often that it is a hassle during the hot summer months.  As time goes by I will post how the new medium does.

 Cultivars that appear to have commercially useful levels of HLB tolerance. The two most noteworthy cultivars are Sugar Belle and SunDragon.

How modern citrus developed, particularly the popular mandarin variety, has long been a mystery to citrus breeders. A global partnership of scientists recently unraveled a big part of the mystery by analyzing the genome sequences of 69 East Asian traditional, wild and atypical citrus varieties. One of the researchers was Fred Gmitter, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences horticulture professor at the Citrus Research and Education Center.The researchers determined that the complexity of many varieties can be traced to three previously unrecognized ancestral lineages. They discovered a new wild citrus species native to the Ryukyu islands, a chain of Japanese islands stretching southwest from Kyushu to Taiwan. From one lineage, an important citrus trait arose -- apomixis, or the ability of the tree to reproduce seedlings that are genetically identical to the mother tree. The spread of this trait throughout the broad citrus family was documented. All oranges, grapefruit, lemons and most citrus rootstocks possess this characteristic.The researchers determined that apomixis was responsible in part for the creation and spread of new hybrid citrus species native to Japan in a rare evolutionary mechanism. The results provide insights into future breeding strategies that may produce more desirable and marketable commercial citrus.“It is humbling to realize that the fruit we grow and eat today is the result of millions of years of both wild evolution and domestic cultivation,” Gmitter said. “Our findings raise more questions about what other citrus hybrids are out there and what characteristics may be beneficial to us as we look to breed more disease-resistant and environmental stress-resilient varieties. Understanding the past is really a window to the future.”