Citrus Trees

Do you have an orange, lemon, lime, grapefruit, tangerine or kumquat tree? These are citrus trees. This picture is of my Valencia orange tree, which has ripe fruit from May through the first part of August.

Citrus trees need pruning and fertilizing, but their needs are different than other fruit trees, such as peaches or apples. Pruning citrus is more for shaping, and removing dead branches and twigs. Be careful when pruning so as not to expose the bark to direct sunlight, because it will easily sunburn. Not long after we moved into our present home (1985), before I knew how to properly care for citrus, I limbed-up this tree, to make it look more like a tree instead of a huge bush. I saw first-hand how bad sunburned bark can be, I thought I killed the tree. It took a couple of years for the bark to scar over, and as you can see, it is still very productive. Be careful and don't do what I did! I have two other citrus trees (see April 29th post) that I will be shaping this week.

Fertilizing citrus is done in late February and then repeated twice at six-week intervals. This is important to the health of the tree and its production of fruit.

Something that I learned this year about tangerines---if they are covered during blooming, so that the bees can't get to the blossoms, the fruit will not have any seeds. Commercially, the farmers are diligent in keeping beehives far away from their orchards, so that the tangerines that go to market are nearly seed-free. My tangerines have always been really seedy, so I will be covering my tree next spring!