So there are qualifications to your original post about mosses that you did not make clear? The point I made is if you have moss growing on your soil check that soil to find out why the mosss is growing there. Do not assume certain fixed beliefs about moss, but dig in and look closely and correct the problems found. Do not simply go and buy some lime, which may not be the right kind and what you do need, and spread it around and waste your money, time, and energy, but have a good, reliable soil test done to determine whether what you need is a calcitic or dolomitic lime and how much would be needed to start to coreect the problem and also look at the level of humus in that soil and get more in there.

Thank you for all the compliments and help! As for soil, it does include some bark components, but is not a specific recipe or anything and does contain some regular soil. Now that I know of some good soil recipes from the forum, I was going to amend it with either the coco-husk or 5:1:1 recipes. Although, it does seem to be doing great in what it is in. Yeah, the only huge lemon I know of is Ponderosa also, so I assume it can or is a Ponderosa. But since every Ponderosa I have seen or grew always fruited when young, I often have wondered if it is not, and maybe some weird Italian native that I do not know of? Mgk65, Thank you! I have learned something new again from you! I really have to find some info about leaf node #s and counts. Hopefully there is a thread here explaining it here in more detail on the forum? So, are the # of leaf nodes to fruit numbers pretty much the the same within one variety? Or, does the # of nodes before fruiting vary greatly even within the same variety? Does the leaf node count apply to just fruiting, or does it apply to when it starts to blossom also? Does a tree have to have a certain amount of leaf nodes before it just blossoms also? Thanks again for all the help! I will be back soon! Christy

Like animals, trees grown from seed must pass through several phases of development before they become sexually mature and capable of producing reproductive parts (blooms/ seeds/ fruit). The plant phases of seed - seedling - juvenile - sexually mature are roughly mirrored in human developmental stages of embryonic - infantile - juvenile - adult/ sexually mature. A freshly sprouted seedling is no more capable of producing reproductive parts (blooms/ seeds/ fruit) than an infant. Too, a plant's aging process is different than an animal's. Where animals age chronologically, plants age ontogenetically. Ontogenetic aging can be thought of in terms of how many cell divisions have occurred to move the plant to its current phase of development. One might reason that the most recent new growth would be the youngest part of the plant, but ontogenetically, it is the the oldest part of the plant because it has taken many more cell divisions to produce the newest parts. Ontogenetically, the youngest part of a tree grown from seed will always be the root to shoot transition area at the base of the trunk, no matter how old the tree is chronologically. Pruning a tree back hard can easily remove all existing mature growth and return it to a juvenile phase that would require a considerable amount of new growth before the wood again becomes mature. All factors that influence growth rate have an impact on how long (chronologically) it takes a plant to become sexually mature, so thinking that a change in nutrition alone will cause a plant to bloom is misguided. The fastest seedlings to mature within any given species will depend on how proficient Mother Nature or the plant's grower is at providing ideal cultural conditions. Ideal cultural conditions = most rapid growth rate and shortest period of time to reach maturity; this, simply because ideal conditions are most conducive to cell divisions and therefore a fruitful tree at a younger chronological age. It should be noted that applying nutrients or other products in willy nilly fashion with no knowledge of whether or not there is an actual deficiency of those nutrients or no good reason to apply them is highly likely to be limiting in terms of both growth and rate of maturation. Whenever we discuss what is or isn't an appropriate part of the methodology we use to make certain our plants get all the nutrients essential to growth and good health, we would probably first want to be sure our objectives are on target. It's difficult to argue with the idea that our focus in supplying supplemental nutrition to our plants should be on ensuring all the nutrients plants normally assimilate from the soil are A) IN the soil and available for uptake at all times, B) in the soil in a favorable ratio - that is to say in a ratio that mimics the ratio at which the plant actually uses the nutrient, C) at a concentration high enough to ensure no nutritional deficiencies, yet still low enough to ensure the plant's ability to take up water efficiently, and the nutrients dissolved in that water won't be impeded (by a high concentration of solubles in the soil solution). The part in bold is where growers often run afoul of sound husbandry. By adding unnecessary nutrients we A) skew the ratio of nutrients, each to the others, such that an excess of one nutrient causes a deficiency of one or more other nutrients, and B) make it more difficult for the plant to assimilate water and nutrients. So, for plants in containers, best results can be had by choosing 1 fertilizer with an appropriate nutrient ratio and all the nutrients essential to normal growth. Forget the snake oil products and claims made on product packaging by sellers whose only goal is separating you from your money. For plants in the landscape, a soil test is ESSENTIAL for any grower aiming at providing the best cultural conditions possible. "A little extra" is almost always going to be limiting rather than beneficial; otherwise, it wouldn't be "extra". Al

Yeah, three or four years is pretty good. My cherimoya that I got from Home Depot last year flowered this year in late May thru June. I successfully hand pollinated about ten flowers, got fruitlets that grew to about 10mm. Over the course of the past two to three weeks, the fruitlets decided to drop on their own, leaving me with now three of the smallest fruitlets that I doubt will make it to harvest. :( i guess they drop because this is their first year flowering and producing fruit?