North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Harrick, Barbara" <b.harrick@ilslaunch.com>]

Hi Yasi. I have Meyer lemons and mandarin orange trees that are in pots.
I live in Northern VA zone 6b. All of the trees are inside right
now--full of oranges and lemons. They are in the pots year-round.

I have found that citrus will flower at the oddest times and sometimes
due to stress (bringing them in etc.) as well as leaf drop--they react
to environmental changes.  I have read that this is normal--also that
the flowers at off times rarely "take".

My citrus is indoors on the ground floor in front of a north facing
sliding glass door--they don't get much light.  (Actually when they are
outside, they are just on the other side of the same sliding glass door,
but get plenty of light--they are next to my strawberry patch which I
remember telling Bill G. that they all seem to get enough light on this
north side.)

I had them inside downstairs for several years and they did just fine.
Then I decided to give them more heat/light and I tried them upstairs
once in a SE facing window/warmer air temps and found they came out of
dormancy too quickly in the spring (too early to be moved outside),
flowered and then dropped all of the little oranges--it was so sad. 

So, now I put them back downstairs (I have a split foyer, so they are
not in a basement) where it is colder (by 10 degrees from upstairs) and
they get little to no direct light. They still flower inside and form
fruits, but about a month later than when they were upstairs. I'm going
to say/guess that upstairs they bloomed in March and downstairs they
bloom in April--so they are still inside with flowers and viable fruit,
but only for a few weeks instead of 2 months--we can put everything out
here by May 1.

Now they flower later (April), I still use the small paintbrush and
fertilize which I understand is not entirely necessary, but what the
heck!

I also have a small humidifier in the center of my trees inside--this
seems to make all the difference when it comes to spider mites and I
haven't seen any scale either.  Also, I noticed I had more spider mites
when the trees were upstairs in the warm, sunlit room.

I have the 2 following books and find them very good for general info as
they both have sections on container citrus gardening.

Citrus by Lance Walheim (Paperback - Dec 1, 1941)(this is the better
one)

All About Citrus & Subtropical Fruits (Ortho's All about) by Ortho Books
(Paperback - Jan 1, 1985)

Both are available on Amazon.com.

Barbara


Barbara Harrick
Senior Technical Editor/Writer
International Launch Services
1875 Explorer Street, Suite 700
Reston, VA 20190
office (571) 633-7430
fax (571) 633-7536

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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 09:17:56 -0500
From: "Jenny Ruth Yasi" <voices@maine.rr.com>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] myers lemons
To: <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Message-ID: <004e01c9401a$781e0350$6400a8c0@albert2>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
        reply-type=original

I have a myers lemon. It spent the summer outside in a pot, and now it's
in 
my south facing window, and for the first time it actually has lemons on
it! 
Hooray! It also has flowers, which seems weird. It has every stage of 
fruiting going on at once! But some of the leaves have yellow, so I am 
concerned that I need to feed the soil.  Anyone else have a lemon?  Do
you 
know what sort of soil it needs? Acid or alkaline? Any special
requirements 
I should know about? Any special tricks? Thanks!

Yasi
www.wholedogcamp.com