[Arid_gardener] troubleshooting citrus trees

[Olin Miller]

What kinds of citrus?  How old.  if the trees are less that 5 years old,
they may not have developed a root structure that will support a lot of
fruit.  Also,  too much nitrogen fertilizer can burn the roots,
especially on young trees, thereby limiting fruit production

Blossom and fruit drop can be the result of hot weather (in the 90s) in
the early spring or high winds. There is also a natural thinning to
limit the fruit to that which can be supported by the roots.  It is
often referred to as "June Drop" but it usually happens in May in the
low desert.  Nothing needs to be done about it except to collect the
fallen fruit, pea size to golf ball size, to discourage insects and
rodents.

You might also want to review your irrigation and fertilization
schedules and amounts.  For irrigation recommendations, refer to,
"AZ1151 Irrigating Citrus Trees  at
http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/crops/az1151.pdf

There is a fertilizer chart at my website at
http://home.att.net/~millero/DesertGardening/FertilizerForCitrus.pdf
that tabulates the nitrogen requirements for various stage of the tree's
growth.  The chart was extracted from the Master Gardener Journal Citrus
Issue which contains the U of A pubs for citrus collected into one
document .
=======================================
From: "by way of Lucy Bradley <LBradley at cals.arizona.edu>"
<MTBLEIL at aol.com>
Sent: Monday, April 24, 2006 8:59 AM
> my neighbor and I have been trying to figure out why our citrus trees
> get
> very few
> friut on them if any at all . Our trees at times have been loaded with
> buds
> and then
> they start to get little tiny starts of fruit then they all fall off .
> could
> you give us any advise on what we doing wrong ?   we would really
> appreciate
> it