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[birdcat]

We are fairly new to growing our own citrus, having only had meyer lemons before.  Our ruby grapefruit and pummelo trees started blooming again (and setting fruit) about 3 weeks ago.  Is this normal for young trees?  Should I be worried?  Our meyer lemmon and key limes are bloominjg heavily too, but they are everblooming so I’m not worried about them.  Thanks for any guidence.

[Carol]

Hi birdcat, yes, it’s actually fairly common to have citrus go to flower again late in the season.

Though the trees are sold young, they’re almost certainly grafted branches from mature trees. Since the branches come from a mature tree, they usually bloom very soon, sometimes even 1, 2 or 3 years after the graft was performed. A normal seed-grown citrus would only ever bloom after 6 or 7 years, normally.

If you feel that the abundance of new fruit setting is endangering the previous fruits, then you can choose to eliminate all of them. If in your area it never freezes, you can choose to keep 1 in 3 or so of the newer fruits, since there’s a chance they’ll survive the winter. But they won’t be as sweet because they don’t get much sun. In the end, especially for young trees, it’s best to let them focus on a few fruits first, say a dozen at most if it’s the first time around. That way they still pour lots of effort into developing roots and such.

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“You got to be a gardener to appreciate dirty and muddy hands.”

[birdcat]

Carol,

Thank you for the information.  I’d searched the web but this information never came up.  I was worried that we had been doing something wrong caring for the trees.  BTW: we have 28 new pummelo on the tree and 9 new grapefruit.  I guess they are happy (and so are the bees and butterflies since they helped)

 

[Carol]

Wow, that’s quite a harvest coming up! Send some updates later. 👍

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“You got to be a gardener to appreciate dirty and muddy hands.”

[cassy0110]

I would be very happy with a flowering tree  🙂

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