6 Reasons WHY Your Citrus Is NOT Fruiting

so you're having orange a lemon a grapefruit a kumquat a lime any plant in the citrus family and you're not getting any flowers and or fruits and you're wondering why is it weather related is it something you're doing or not doing well in this episode I'm gonna be giving you six reasons why your citrus plants are not flowering or fruiting so let's go ahead and get started all right guys let's go ahead and get started with the reason number one and that is water related issues yes if you don't want to use citrus plants guess what you're not gonna get any flowers and if you don't get any flowers you're not gonna get any fruits but it's a little more complicated than just water related or not enough water or too much water get the too much water out of your head because that is not the reason why it's usually lack of water but I classify lack of water in two different categories category number one it's gonna be container plants and let me explain if your citrus plants are in containers like this guys right here and they are flowering all this guys right here just got done flowering and the fruits are setting right now but in containers if your trees go dry when they are flowering guess what's gonna happen a lot of your flowers are gonna dry up like this right here and then they're gonna fall off and just like that no fruits for you next year so if your plants are in containers it's very important for you to keep them watered especially during flowering season because if you miss watering and your trees well just a tiny bit the first thing to go are gonna be your flowers no flowers for you guess what no fruits for you next year this is very important in container plants extremely important now establish plants like this grapefruit over here it's gonna be a little different they react differently especially if they are fully rooted in the ground so what usually happens if you plant and doesn't have enough water in the ground well the first thing that's gonna happen is well your tree is not going to grow this grapefruit right here it's only a few years old and it's easily I would say at least 12 feet tall so if you have a citrus plant it should be at least this big but anyways plants in the ground that do not get enough water but they get enough water just to survive they actually flower tons the entire canopy is just gonna be on overdrive It's Gonna Give You millions and millions of flowers it's gonna lose a lot of those flowers but a lot of a lot of those flowers will take and the tree is going to be overloaded and you're gonna think that you're doing something amazing but in reality what the tree is actually doing is trying to reproduce because it thinks it's dying the tree is gonna look like crap a lot of your branches are gonna be dying back especially at the tips the tree is going to look bare the branches everywhere but guess what full of fruits that is a sign that you are not watering enough and obviously if that keeps on going your tree is gonna die even if you get fruits so for trees in the ground it's a little more complicated to tell but definitely deep water your citrus plant in the ground after it's being established and you should have normal flour and fruits but if you start seeing million fruits everywhere and your branches are dying back and the tree just looks like crap well guess what that may be the last crop you're gonna get out of your citrus reason number two is going to be rootstock yes if you're not familiar with grafting well let me give you the quick rundown that is when you get a tree that you grew from seed and then you get a branch from a known variety and then you stick them together okay the new branch that you stuck together on the top that is the grafted part of the tree and the bottom piece is going to be rootstock now those are two different trees growing on the same trunk why is that important no well let me show you the branch on the left is rootstock this branch is actually growing from the original tree that they chopped in half and they grafted another Tree on the top this is the grafted part of the tree you can see the rootstock is a lot thicker it's a lot bigger and if you look up there are no fruits on it nothing zero but you can see they grafted part of the tree it has fruits graph the trees wool through the same year whether they hold it or not that's a different story but they are gonna flower and have some fruits if the conditions are right but if you have a citrus most likely it was grafted and young ones you have to pay attention because if not the rootstock will grow faster than the grafted part of the tree and even though they're both connected to the same trunk the original tree will always outgrow the grafted part of the tree and if this Branch right here gets so big to the point that it Shades the grafted part of the tree this one is just not gonna grow it's gonna act as a completely different tree separate from the original tree and eventually it's gonna die off so if you have a citrus in the ground maybe you just bought your house and you have not seen any fruit most likely the person before you did not prune did not cut the suckers below the graph point and those outgrew the original tree and they grafted part of the tree is probably dead and when you actually have growing it's rootstock what it's rootstock well that was probably planted originally as a seed seeds well they could be true to a type or not but normally they do take several years to start flowering so if you have a tree it looks amazing you're doing the watering right and everything is perfect you probably have Roots stuck growing and it's very hard to tell once the trees are older but a sure way to tell is if you're not getting flowers and or fruits and once you actually do start getting flowers and fruits most likely it's not gonna be the tree that you originally bought how can what can you do in order to fix that problem well unfortunately there's nothing you can do about it especially if the main part of the tree it's already dead you can graft another variety onto it um and you know you can start the the process again but other than that nothing else you can do reason number three that is shade Believe It or Not Citrus plants need a lot of direct sunlight a lot even here in the desert guys yes how do I know that because I learned by experience by having my trees in the shade and seeing no fruits now if your trees are in the containers you're not gonna really notice this as much in containers they don't really need that much sunlight compared to the ones in the ground I don't know why this is maybe because they have a bigger root system in the ground than in the pots so they don't need that much energy but I've noticed this mainly with trees in the ground in this area right here this is a Hatcher mango but back in the day many many years ago I used to have an orange tree right here it was beautiful it was before my YouTube time so I don't have any pictures of it but this tree was huge but you can see this area right here is too shaded the leaves were green amazing but no flowers and whatever flowers that I got most of them did not set fruit and they did that for a few years eventually I realized that it needed direct sunlight the little bit of sunlight that I got here in the late afternoon was not enough so what we did we dug the tree up and we gave it to somebody that actually put it in the ground in full-time and now that tree is doing great and fruiting tons but if your citrus tree is in the ground and it has been in the ground for a few years it's looking great and you're not seeing hardly any flowers and the flowers you do see they're not turning into fruits most likely your tree is not getting enough sunlight especially in areas that do not get enough sunlight the way it is I'm in the desert guys tons of sunlight but even here if my trees are in the shade they will not produce well reason number four and that is going to be wrong time of the year temperatures let me explain maybe you just bought your citrus it was in a container like this you brought it home and you had it for like seven days and you're frustrated that it has no fruits you fertilize them you get a fish Emulsion you put asamite in there you fold your fat in you put microizer in there all the stuff people tell you to do online it's been seven days and three hours and your tree is still enough flowering and fruiting well check this out guys if it's not the time of the year for your tree to flower and or the temperatures are not right your trees are not going to flower in my area they normally flower in the spring for me a spring is around March April depending on the temperatures and that is important I'll explain in a minute but right time of the year so if you bought your tree it's in the middle of July and you have no flowers well guess what that is normal you're not gonna have flowers until next year now let's talk about temperatures let's say your tree is in the container maybe you live in a colder State maybe you keep your citrus in a greenhouse you have a lot of sunlight you have artificial light maybe you keep all your citrus indoors tonsillites you bought the most expensive grow light you can you could find out there but you still see no flowers well guess what temperatures is just as important as sunlight if you have sunlight but you do not have the temperatures you're not going to see flowers or the other way around if you have temperatures but you don't have the sunlight you're not going to see flowers and whatever flowers you see they're not gonna stay and this is going to be very common for people growing citrus in containers and colder states with not enough sunlight or cold temperatures so if you have your citrus in a greenhouse and you had it for many years and you hardly see any flowers and you know you don't have rootstock you got your watering down correctly you have enough sunlight or artificial light but you still have the flowers you need to add heat how much I don't know every plant is going to be different but I can tell you as long as you keep the temperatures consistently in the 60s to 70s you should be able to get some flowers but the temperatures need to be consistent not just daytime they also need to be at night so if you think you're going to turn the heater on during daytime and shut it off at night or vice versa it's not going to work the temperatures need to be consistent every single day day and night reason number five and that is the weather yes Mother Nature can do whatever it wants or the government too but anyways that's a topic for a different video if the flowers are open and it rains guess what just happened the rain will wash stuff all the pollen from your flowers enough roots for you just like that just because the flowers decided to open when it was supposed to rain or maybe the flowers open they got pollinated but maybe it's super windy in your area you got tons to win guess what's gonna happen all this flower is gonna get blown away or the little fruits if you don't catch them they're gonna get blown away too and just like that no fruits for you you just lost the fruits for next year if you didn't know Citrus in general they take months and months to actually ripen and during the ripening process you gotta deal with the Sun you gotta deal with the wind you got to deal with the rain so unless you're able to control all those factors you're gonna be losing a lot of your fruits and this is normal especially on young trees if you just plant your tree in the ground you're gonna lose a lot of your fruits if you treat certain containers you're gonna lose a lot of your fruits this is normal this is expected plants are just plants they're not machines if you own a machine go get a machine you're growing plants plants are not gonna be predictable especially when you grow them outside reason number six and last reason that is your plant is brand new in the ground if you didn't know once you put your tree on the ground it will take time months if not over a year for your plan to root itself in the ground during this time rooting itself is going to be more important than flowering and fruiting so if your plant have flowers or if it was meant to flower and it did not or if it did and all the flowers dropped and you had your water in it right you know you don't have rootstock and you follow the other tips then it's because your plant is basically grown roots in the ground this is very normal especially if your plants are young brand new in the ground and remember Citrus take a long time to ripen if you lose your flowers this year you just lost your crop for next year so that is two years with enough roots for you so remember if you're gonna Garden you're gonna grow plants you gotta be patient being impatient does not work in this business and that's why all these companies out there make tons of money because people want results now people don't want to wait and all you need is just some patience and a little bit of time bonus step guys and technically this is not a reason and the reason why I say that is because I have had thousands of citrus over the past few years and not a single one suffer from this but this is still a possibility and this is fertilization check this out this will only apply to you if the other reasons do not apply to you and you had your citrus for a long time I'm talking I'm talking about years and years and your citrus is actually in a container not in the ground your leaves are pale yellow they're not curling because you're giving it enough water and this yellowing has been going on for months and months and the tree is just looking terrible and it's not growing well guess what your tree needs food if your plants in a container well they rely on you 100 for sustainment and if you don't fertilize them well they're gonna start and if your trees are starving and containers are going to do a little bit of the same as in the ground they're gonna try to flower profusely but they will only do this once or twice it will get to a point where you literally will not have any more energy left and uh it's just gonna you know it's downhill from there so if you have your citrus in a container it looks yellow it looks like crap no dime branches it just looks very pale and you had it for a few years that's very important and you have no fruits most likely you need to feed your plant if you want to learn how to fertilize your citrus I got another video link in the description where you can learn when is the best time to fertilize it what fertilizers we use here and blah blah blah but I can tell you I have not had a single Citrus do that to me here at the nursery because even here even though I'm lazy I'm not consistent my plants still flowering fruit because they still have food in the potting mix this is not coming in the ground because in the ground at least plants are able to find their own food source in the containers this is where you're going to find that problem but it's extremely rare if you're watching this video don't just jump to the bonus tip that I just gave you look through the other ones the main one is going to be water I see I would say over nine percent of the reasons out there is going to be water related or it's gonna be a reason number um I think it was five your treats are brand new in the ground well those are going to be the main two reasons why your citrus trees are not fruiting or flowering and then the other one that's really uh very common is also rootstock and this one applies to a lot of people that are buying new houses or houses with existing trees in the ground and they don't know the history well you know a lot of people don't take care of the trees they don't prune the suckers and then they got amazing looking trees but no fruits or if they have fruits the fruits don't taste good so anyways guys hopefully this helps you out I get this question all the time all the time I'm not exaggerating every single week I get emails and text messages from people sending me pictures asking what is wrong with their citrus trees and every single time it's one of the reasons that I just stated anyways if you liked the video don't forget to like it so that way more people can see it it gets referred to other people and more people know what true gardening is about don't forget to subscribe because over 90 of you watching right now are not subscribed to the Channel all it takes is just one simple click and as always guys if you have any questions comment below I will try to answer them for you and I will see you next time

Channel: QCTropicals

Views: 6,145

Keywords: how to, citrus, hybrid, watering, grow, grapefruit, ruby red, red grapefruit, white grapefruit, fertilize, orange, lemon, limes, how long to fruit, seedling, polyembryonic, monoembryonic, calamondin, calamansi, dead branches

Id: XXPxRm9h6M8

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Sun May 14 2023