Citrus Greening, what are YOU doing

[ericalynne]

I tried this in the citrus forum with minimal response. I know many of us who grow other tropicals, also have some citrus. I have read conflicting advice by googling. I am wondering if others are destroying trees, or just making do with what they have.

I have a dancy tangerine that is obviously seriously infected with classic symptoms, including bitter fruit. Also a couple of lemon and a couple of orange trees that look like they probably have early stages. Then I have a finger lime, kept in a separate location that does not seem to be infected at all. It is still in a large pot.

Do I:

1) Tear out all the citrus (except the finger lime)
2) Remove the Dancy and keep everything else
3) Keep everything and do a lot of foliar spraying to keep them as healthy as possible.

There are commercial orange orchards about 2 miles away. There are woods and cow pasture in between. If I cleared it all out, would I be likely to be reinfected from the orchard? There are also scattered "wild" citrus throughout the woods that surrounds our land and is between us and the citrus orchard.

If I buy new citrus tress, are they certified as greening free? Anyway to tell that early on?

Thanks,
Erica
Venus, zone 9b

[gnappi]

I read that finger lime is not affected by CG so you don't have to worry there. I've been looking for a finger lime but AFAIK they are not allowed to be sold in Florida.

I do not think that there are CG immune trees, but I'm sure there are lots of people working on it. For my part, I only have one Persian lime that won't be a loss and I have no plans on getting more citrus... those beautiful trees in Lowes and HD catch my eye but not my credit card  :-)

I probably read many of the articles you did on CG, but I didn't think there was conflicting advice, it seems like there is no good news on CG.

[bsbullie]

Again, the internet can be a wealth of knowledge,  unfortunately much of it is really bad and inaccurate.   Finger limes ARE propagated and available in Florida.   Excalibur has them for sale.

[gnappi]

Again, the internet can be a wealth of knowledge,  unfortunately much of it is really bad and inaccurate.   Finger limes ARE propagated and available in Florida.   Excalibur has them for sale.

Thanks Rob. I read on a nursery page that they could not ship to Florida, and made an assumption. I'll continue looking for one.

[bsbullie]

If you really wanted one, you could look past your hatrid of me or a certain nursery (for whatever reason it may be), and easily purchase one.

[gnappi]

If you really wanted one, you could look past your hatrid of me or a certain nursery (for whatever reason it may be), and easily purchase one.

Boy, you don't get it. I don't dislike you at all, I don't know you.

While I find your acidic commentary unnecessary, I also appreciate your selfless giving your time and knowledge to us. As far as where I do business, I find it more convenient to not drive too far out of my way if I can avoid it.

[bsbullie]

People, and many of them forum members,  drive from Miami, Hollywood,  St, Pete, Orlando,  Sarasota  and many other places to by trees.  To me, driving from Coral Springs  to Lake Worth is not that big of a deal if it is to ger something you want.   Yes, i know everyone is different and i am not judging you for that but (depending on where in Springs you are)  its equql to or less than an hour and half round trip.

[TREESNMORE]

Finger limes can get citrus greening.

[gnappi]

Finger limes can get citrus greening.

If so, there goes my need :-)

[Jsvand5]

I tried this in the citrus forum with minimal response. I know many of us who grow other tropicals, also have some citrus. I have read conflicting advice by googling. I am wondering if others are destroying trees, or just making do with what they have.

I have a dancy tangerine that is obviously seriously infected with classic symptoms, including bitter fruit. Also a couple of lemon and a couple of orange trees that look like they probably have early stages. Then I have a finger lime, kept in a separate location that does not seem to be infected at all. It is still in a large pot.

Do I:

1) Tear out all the citrus (except the finger lime)
2) Remove the Dancy and keep everything else
3) Keep everything and do a lot of foliar spraying to keep them as healthy as possible.

There are commercial orange orchards about 2 miles away. There are woods and cow pasture in between. If I cleared it all out, would I be likely to be reinfected from the orchard? There are also scattered "wild" citrus throughout the woods that surrounds our land and is between us and the citrus orchard.

If I buy new citrus tress, are they certified as greening free? Anyway to tell that early on?

Thanks,
Erica
Venus, zone 9b

If you buy new trees they should not be infected at the time of purchase but it won't be long until they are.

Citrus are pointless to deal with at this point in FL IMO. To many problems to make it worth it. Unless they find or develop a variety that is resistant to all of the problems I think you are better off just buying citrus. In my area at least, the farmers market has a huge selection of some of the best citrus varieties for very cheap.

[luc]

Just to stay on the safe side I have been eliminating little by little my citrus trees , keeping only the fingerlime , buddha hand and wampi

[Tropheus76]

I have about 15 citrus on my property. As far as I am aware, there isnt any citrus within miles of my location aside from a one or twofer in private ownership. I have pulled a few thanks to the various other things that  make citrus the biggest PITA there seems to be in the fruit tree world as far as Im concerned. I am however expecting it to make an appearance at some point so what I do is spray various foliar sprays often, keep them dosed up on plenty of good citrus fertilizer(its blue, it has to be good ) and while on most of my trees I am content to use strictly Neem, I make an exception with my citrus and use a little more hardcore stuff. I have other plans like trying the plastic bag trick and so forth, if greening rears its ugly head. Currently lots of good growth and color along with good fruit.

[Galka]

gnappi I bought my green finger lime tree online from fl citrus nursery and now looking for red one.

In my area at least, the farmers market has a huge selection of some of the best citrus varieties for very cheap.

Jsvand5 Where is that farmers market you are talking about? I'd like to visit it.

[Jsvand5]

gnappi I bought my green finger lime tree online from fl citrus nursery and now looking for red one.

In my area at least, the farmers market has a huge selection of some of the best citrus varieties for very cheap.

Jsvand5 Where is that farmers market you are talking about? I'd like to visit it.

Just the market of marion. Has a pretty big fruit section. They usually don't have any fruit that are too interesting but  I did manage to get some lychees one season

[Tiberivs]

I saw a red-lime from mycitrustrees being sold at homedepot. i almost got it but didn't even know what a red-lime was. I wanted an everbearing lime not sure if that one falls under that category?

[Galka]

Jsvand5 Thanks. 

[LEOOEL]

When buying citrus trees, it's crucial to do the most important thing, and that is to buy healthy, clean trees from a reputable nursery dealer. To me, this is even  more important getting a good price. The last time I purchased citrus trees, I bought them at ECHO Nursery near Tampa, FL. I bought about 12 citrus fruit trees from them and they were all clean and healthy. Unfortunately, I don't think that they're selling fruit trees to the general public any more.

[KarenRei]

As I posted in the other thread, consider heat-tenting your infected trees.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/aug13/citrus0813.htm

The results seem to be quite impressive in terms of restoring tree health and fruit quality, and you're probably reducing their ability to infect other trees as well.  The process is basically baking them in the sun in clear plastic tents every day for 2-10 days (preferably a week), at least 104F, preferably 110-125F (bottom to top), and allowed to cool down at night, then trimming off whatever growth died from the heat. It's not clear how exactly it works since one wouldn't expect it to have an effect on the bacteria in the roots, but in some way or another it seems disruptive to the infection, and the results seem to be surprisingly durable.

These are treated trees:



These are untreated trees from the same grove:

[bangkok]

We (my MIL and me) do nothing and the pomelo's navels limes are fine.

My pomelo has fruit from 4 months old and also from 1 week old, it blooms again today.

Our tree's are in full sun though, potted and full soil. Temperatures here in full sun are around 100 fahrenheit so maybe that's the trick?

[Mr. Clean]

Erica:

My solutions was to plant mango trees instead of citrus, but since you are Zone 9...maybe that won't work for you. 

The leading solution for greening is the heat tenting that KarenRei suggested.  The heat is supposed to kill off the greening disease...sort of like a sweat lodge for trees.  Why not try to save the trees via heat tenting?

[KarenRei]

Also, as for the issue of not getting replies in the citrus forum... I think it's a layout problem of this forum. We have the "main forum" here, and then one little subforum just for citrus, and then off-topic and the like. So most people just read this and never visit the citrus forum. Realistically either the citrus forum should be merged into here so that most people actually read it, or the main forum should be broken up into many more subcategories so that people are more likely to read more than just this one forum section. Mangoes would be an obvious subcategory, as would annonas and their relatives; the two of them together probably make up 1/3rd to 1/2 of the posts here. "Pest control" and "ID this plant" also. Lesser but still common topics are about avocados, garcinias, jaboticaba and relatives,  eugenias and relatives, artocarpus, durio, bananas, passionfruit (or more broadly, "vines" to cover also monstera and the like), papaya and relatives, lychee and relatives, theobroma and relatives, coconuts, cactus fruit, soil, "where to find...", greenhouses, and photogalleries. Plus, obviously, "miscellaneous".  But even merely breaking off mangoes and annonas would probably do the trick to get people to not focus solely on this one section.

[ericalynne]

Mr. Clean, that is a very good thought. I would much rather have mangos! Of course zone 9 is a problem.

I am leaning toward digging up all the citrus and replacing them with something else. They just aren't good enough to spend so much time and energy on. I do like walking out and picking fresh tangerines in the morning. They have an extra taste sparkle when picked fresh that they lack when they sit around for a day or two.

Thanks to all the responses.

Erica
In Venus where the forecast for Thursday night has dropped to 31.

[KarenRei]

Mr. Clean, that is a very good thought. I would much rather have mangos! Of course zone 9 is a problem.

I am leaning toward digging up all the citrus and replacing them with something else. They just aren't good enough to spend so much time and energy on. I do like walking out and picking fresh tangerines in the morning. They have an extra taste sparkle when picked fresh that they lack when they sit around for a day or two.

Thanks to all the responses.

Erica
In Venus where the forecast for Thursday night has dropped to 31.

I can't imagine that digging up and replanting would be less effort than tenting for a week, but to each their own.    If you're looking for an excuse to get rid of them then I guess you have one.