help needed re Orange trees

[geegee]

Yikes, that sounds a pretty atomic cocktail, Sid, do you glow in the dark after eating your oranges? Think I would rather eat the aphids - problem is , I can't stand Muesli. Grousers meths sounds a tad more appealing - I think the combination is called Cointreau

[mhic]

Back in England we had one apple tree which would give loads of fruit one year and nothing the next. Now for the past six years our orange and mandarin tree's have given us more fruit than we could eat but this year there is very little.

At the moment we have fruit almost ready to pick plus tiny new fruit plus blossom, now I know thats not uncommon but it has never happened with our trees before, anyone any ideas why this year is different.

Mhic.

[geegee]

Slightly confused as you say you have very little fruit but then you have ripe fruit, new fruit and flowers ...just not very many of each presumably.

I have a lemon that flowers and fruits all year round (its a perpetual fruiting variety so no surprise there) but otherwise I find there is much more biennial fruit and nut growth here - good harvest one year, virtually none the next, good the year after and so on, like your old apple tree.

I think your citrus are probably just responding to the conditions this year - slow start to the summer checked a lot of growth earlier in the year, at least here, 650m above sea level, but making up for it with glorious weather now, so you are bound to have fruit at different stages. If its been a dry summer by you that will explain the reduced harvest in general. Its very difficult to say exactly why your trees are being peculiar, maybe the soil is getting exhausted, do you manure/mulch every autumn and give them a general citrus feed?

[mhic]

That's right, not a lot of each. Do use a fertilizer but not specific for citrus, I'll give that a try. I think it could well be due to the weather but wanted to see if anyone else agreed.

Mhic.

[karandjon]

Hi,

we have 90 orange trees and this year have noticed that a white maggot seems to have got inside the orange.(There is like a dark coloured dot on the skin where it has entered). Has anyone else experienced this problem, or have any advice what we need to do to eradicate this problem?

Also, how do people feel about asking Admin for a Gardening Forum as i notice there are quite a few gardening queries posted in various sections at the moment. I personally think it would be a winner to have a gardening section to post in, a bit like the yummy cooking one.

many thanks,

Karen