The Tropical Fruit Forum

Olivier, are you watering your trees with municipal water or well water?   If municipal water, you can get the water's composition from your supplier.  For well water you will need the water tested.  Could very well be from high levels of carbonates and bicarbonates.  When I stared growing citrus I used my well water, and the trees had all sorts of problems due to high  levels of bicarbonates.  I switched to a mixture of 1/3 well water and 2/3 rain water and my trees quickly returned to good health.

I will have to check then, I use municipal water exclusively.
I'm hoping it's not the issue because where I live I wouldn't be able to setup a barrel to collect rain water.

Browning on the branches  stopped or slowed down at least, the tree seems to be stabilizing. I'm hoping to see leaves grow back soon

I wouldn't be able to tell the peat type honestly, I don't have the bag anymore.
The tree has this soil for over a year now and it started turning like this only recently.
Could a PH problem take that long to surface?

After comparing with other posts on this forums, I think it might be spider mite damage.

I had spider mite issues this winter. I washed all my trees under the shower and it got rid of most of them, but some trees still seem to suffer despite being cleared of mites.

I'll keep watching them closely and wash them off with water regularly to keep the mites away.

Hi,

I have some issues on most of my trees. I think I might have over fertilized them during the winter and now some branches are dying slowly starting from the tip.
Some leaves are browning and show some odd color (see picture attached).

The leaf on the picture was taken off my yuzu tree.

I checked this link and it seems to be over fetilization:
http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/C107/m107bpleaftwigdis.html

If it is in fact over fertilization, what should I do? Simply water my trees as much as possible without drowning them to dissolve the excess sodium?
Or is repotting mandatory at this point?

I have this very young Meiwa Kumquat tree and I'd like to have some input from you citrus enthusiast veterans.

I read in another thread that it is rather pointless to shape young trees, however I also read that it should be avoided to have a Y embranchment on a tree. So I'm not sure what's the best course of action here.

My tree seems to be currently set to grow with that Y shape at the base, where one branch is growing vigorously and the other one is less vigorous and quite elongated. Should I cut the long branch so the tree can focus its growth on the vertical branch or just let it do its own thing?

See picture attached.

I just bought 7 trees from Madison Citrus Nursery. They all look great.
I was surprised to see they sold US942, I couldn't find that rootstock anywhere else.

Wow, I love that website. So many great varieties for sale.
I will be travelling to the US in a few weeks. I'll be sure to place an order. Hopefully I can fly back home with a few trees without any issue.

Thanks for sharing, Millet.

My tree started flowering a few months ago. Some fruits set, and I kept them on. 3 are remaining and they look like they're going to stay on the tree until they reach maturity.

However, the tree won't stop flowering instead of pushing new leaves and branches. I pick off the flowers, but they keep coming back. My tree is quite small and I would like it to grow bigger at this point.

It receives the same treatment as my other citrus trees, and the other ones are doing well. Is it typical of Buddha Hand trees to grow slow and constantly bloom?

I just completed my first indoor season, and based on my experience I think your current plan is solid.

The lamp choice seems good. Wide lamps seem to do be better than compact and very powerful ones. My current lamp is compact/powerful and supposed to cover my whole grow space, but the leaves and fruits on the edges did poorly.

You might want to keep an eye on the airflow and consider adding another fan. It's very easy to get high temperatures and dry air at the top of the tent and high humidity at the bottom.
I had this issue last winter and it left me susceptible to both root rot and spider mites.

Thank you all for your answers, I appreciate it.

If you are growing in containers in the north your trees will be dwarfed anyway to some degree.

I was under the impression a tree would produce better quality fruits the closer it gets to its full potential/maturity. That is based on some thread I read here about grapefruit trees. I don't know if it applies to all citrus though.

Assuming the above statement is true, I'd like to get a tree that is meant to be relatively short.

My Fukushu on Flying dragon is slow right now.  My New Zealand on Seville sour and another NZL on US897 will grow all winter under lights.

I have one tree on US897 and it barely grew this winter, but the tree seems to have been mistreated in the past (weak trunk with scars) so it's probably not a good benchmark. Among the trees I have, those grafted on KH (couldn't figure what rootstock that is) are doing the best in terms of growth.


For those of you who graft trees on a regular basis, where do you obtain your rootstock? I can find Flying Dragon, Trifoliate Orange and C-35 rather easily, but the USDA rootstocks (US-xxx) seem to be reserved for wholesellers. I must have contacted 15 nurseries in Florida so far and no luck yet.

Thanks for sharing the video containerman. It's a great collection you have there.

Well that sounds great. It's pretty much the ideal scenario for me. Possibly my first fruit while not slowing down the growth.

I was wondering if there was any use for fallen blossoms on citrus trees. Can those flowers be used to make products such as orange blossom water or perfumes?

Does any of you use those flowers, and if so, how do you use them?