Weekly Garden Tip

October 22, 2006

By Gene Joyner, Extension Agent
Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service

Dooryard citrus now is beginning to appear in the markets and if you’re fortunate enough to have trees in your yard that have citrus fruit on them early varieties such as navels, Dancy tangerines, Hamelin oranges and some lemons and limes can be harvested at this time of year.

If you have fruit that when you open it is not as good a quality as you normally have had in the past, several factors could have caused it. One is distress from last year’s hurricanes and secondly lack of regular fertilizer. As fruit is developing on citrus if it runs into shortages of certain nutrients it may not develop properly and this may result in fruit which is dry or partially dry.

This is a real problem on young citrus or generally any citrus that’s less than 8 to 10 years of age. Older mature trees that have been bearing well for years and suddenly have poor quality fruit usually means simply an imbalance of nutrients or they need higher quantities applied when you do fertilize.

Some citrus are losing leaves this time of year which is normal and this will continue up until early winter. Usually it’s the old leaves which are discoloring and as long as the new growth is green and healthy don’t worry about the old leaves yellowing and falling off the tree.

If you want to add citrus, there are nurseries locally that do have citrus for sale and you can put it in your landscape now and expect some flowers on it next spring. Existing trees that are still recovering from last year’s hurricanes need to be pruned regularly to give them desirable shapes and you can do pruning on citrus virtually at any time. If you have branches that are hanging way out of the general outline of the tree or hanging low enough they drag the ground, these can be removed so the tree has a better overall appearance.

If you have questions about specific citrus problems you see something that you don’t recognize, you can get helpful advice from the Palm Beach County Extension office during normal business hours. Dial 233-1750 in the north and central county area or 276-1260 in the south county area.

Printed information on citrus and other fruit trees is also available at Extension offices.