Topic: Lemon tree.

[tricia]

I have my lemon tree outdoors in its pot in a sheltered spot. It is flowering profusely and has put on new growth over the past few weeks. Can anyone tell me why most of the incipient fruit are falling off? How soon should those tiny fruitlets start to swell? The pot gets watered every few days and fed once a week.

The plant was a gift from a friend who couldn't be bothered with it! I've given it a lot of TLC so I'd like to get some reward.

Tricia

[goodlife]

Often the tree will do a bit of self-thinning with the fruit..and those what doesn't drop off will swell up only slowly..and once there is a signs of those fruits staying on I'll normally thin them even further..only one per 'clump' left on...other wise you will end up with several miniture ones.. ::)
I've had only odd one staying on sofar..and that's normal..I tend to get my lemons during winter months..they are very slow to grow and ripen..

[tricia]

Thanks for the info Anja. There is still one green fruit on the tree from the winter, so I hope it will soon have some company  ;D.

Tricia

[Vinlander]

One thing comes to mind... Citrus are the opposite of everything else in terms of NPK.

If you give them tomato fertiliser (high potash) then they won't fruit properly - they need high nitrogen feed to fruit properly  - this is normally regarded as leaf fertiliser and useless for fruiting any other crop.

The standard summer feed for citrus has twice as much N as the P and K so 20:10:10 or  40:20:20 - Chempak used to do one of the latter but I haven't seen it about for years. It was a lot cheaper than specialised "citrus fertiliser" even if you include the cost of the trace elements you need to add yourself (seaweed mainly).

If you want an organic alternative then extra dried blood on top of a balanced fertiliser plus seaweed will do it.

Cheers.

[tricia]

I am using Vitax Citrus feed for summer which has 25.15.15. The nitrogen is broken down to 4.3% nitric nitrogen, 4.1% ammoniacal nitrogen and 16.6% ureic nitrogen. I use it once a week and water every two or three days in this dry weather. The tiny fruitlets are still dropping off as fast as the new flowers come into bloom  :(.

Tricia

[Spookyville]

got some large fruit on ours but seem to have been green forever now. they just don't seem to want to turn yellow :(

[Sexki11en]

I have 2 fruit on mine that are still green from last August!  Flowers form and start to look like they will fruit then just drop off. 

SK x