Author Topic: flowers but no fruit  (Read 580 times)

sea4

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flowers but no fruit
« on: June 15, 2022, 04:48:49 PM »
I've had this (ungrafted) limequat since 2016. Had a few small crops off of it.

Last year, plant had many flowers, I didn't get fruit. I had been spraying nearby plants with hort oil and figured that was the cause, but I believe I had a second flower flush with no fruit. Don't recall if there were fruit that formed and fell off, tho. (you know how tiny quats are)
 
Plants are all crowded closely on my deck, so now I move the flowering ones when I spray hort oil (big hassle). I might try covering with a light cloth, but that could damage flowers.

But even being so careful, the limequat appears to be doing the same this year. It just finished flowering (a lot!) but I only see 2 tiny fruits.

I have other plants flowering and setting fruit.

The only other thing I am wondering about is the rootball. I have repotted twice since getting this, and the root mass is very dense at the top of pot, you cannot get a finger stuck into the media. Despite that, the plant does not seem to suffer from watering issues. I am basing that on the foliage, but I do know that water is especially important around flowering.

What could I do about the dense root issue? I have run a metal skewer through from the top of rootball to create channels, fwiw.

Plants get urea and Peter's 25-5-15 and this plant looks very healthy otherwise.

(p.s. I did stain my deck last season, so that horrible peeling you see is because I used a new/inferior stain >:()

brian

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Re: flowers but no fruit
« Reply #1 on: June 17, 2022, 11:16:46 PM »
It might be the lighting in your picture, but your tree looks to have yellowed leaves, and no fresh new leaves, and some twig dieback.  Overall it looks stressed.  I have seen many times with my trees when thet are stressed they will put out tons of flowers but no leaves. 

When is the last time you repotted?  How big is the container compared to the rootball?  I would pull it out of the pot, see if the roots are soggy, see how free draining the soil is, repot if necessary with fresh free draining soil.

Also, if your leaves have little speckles all over you might have spider mites, check online for good examples.

Finally, you might need to increase fertilizer but it looks more like a drainage or mite issue to me.