I enjoyed seeing your pictures.

I have never seen the blooms so thick on my Myer's and Brown Select Satsuma. It looks like snow underneath them now.

You yard must smell heavenly! God, I wish I could just stick all mine in teh ground. I just might try that in the greenhouse for a try.

Peter..You know what should encouarge many? Although a Meyer might loose many leaves, it doesn't mean it's not healthy! I noticed a few bare trees loaded with blooms. I think it's just the nature of the beast.

Lovely!

I am not having success with mine this year. NOT A ONE has a full set of leaves. They have either lost them to spider mites which has tired me out, or to sunlight and temps changes. They always seem to do much better as soon as I can get them outside. My look pitiful if you ask me:-(

Thanks for sharing:-)

Mike

Peter, very nice, good job

Wow, great spelling and sentence structure on my part yesterday! It must of been the pain killers I was on.

Sheesh. Do I write like that all the time? I always catch my stupid mistakes a day later, never before I post or at preview time! lol

Mike

Hi Mike:

Actually I thought it might be related to your grief concerning your lack of success this year. :-)

I wish I could package the fragrance and send it to you in return for all the advice in the past.

According to all the weather reports we have seen out here it looks like y'all are warmer than normal. Can't your citrus go outside now?

Rest and enjoy the Spring!

Peter

Hi Houstontexas123:

Thanks for the kind words. Did you all ever get enough rain to mitigate your record-breaking drought? Do you have any citrus? If so, how did they do?

Stay well,

Peter

we've been getting a good amount of rain the past 2 months, but we're still in the moderate drought rating. half of TX is still under the severe-extreme drought. my water bill last summer was ridiculous.

3 of mine have bloom, the other 2 are putting out new growth.

Nice pictures. Your trees are looking very good, especially considering their first winter in the ground was 2010-2011. Don't want a repeat of that winter any time soon.

I'm in the process of starting a new yard, I moved across the valley to Marana last spring. It's an opportunity to start again with new trees and new variety choices. I left a few 6 year old trees at the former place that were my novice learning trees. LoL, I still feel sorry for the mistakes I put them through, but they survived and maybe forgive me :).

All my new trees are from home depot and were planted in ground last May from 3 gallon containers. So far most are doing pretty good, and have more than doubled in size. It hasn't been a numerous blossom spring for me though, but maybe that's for the best since they still need to grow. Snapped a couple of cell phone pix, sorry about the quality :(

Oro Blanco
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Trovita orange
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Flame grapefruit
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Moro blood orange. It's a disappointment being the only tree that hasn't grown much and no blooms at all this spring. Maybe partly because it is on C-35 roots and the rest are on Carizzo ? I have a replacement waiting in the wings though.
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The intended replacement for my under performing Moro is a graft I made two weeks ago. I cleft grafted 3 "Bream" Tarroco scion sticks onto Seville sour orange roots. All 3 scion sticks have buds breaking through the parafilm so I'm hoping for 100% take. I've left quite a bit of the sour orange lower foliage on so far, but there are 3 more good grafting branches available. When the Tarroco scions are a little more established I'll remove the remaining sour orange foliage and cleft graft 3 scion sticks from my poor performing Moro on there to create a 2 way blood orange tree; half Tarocco and half Moro. Hopefully it will be ready to put in the ground in place of the poor Moro next spring.
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Bada Bing-

Your trees look so green and nice! My Lane Late Orange I put in the ground last year from a #3 bucket has not grown AT ALL. It has only put out a few sets of small leaves. It did produce 3 awesome oranges last year and this year as of now has hundreds of flowers! Its funny to see my little skinny tree full of flowers and when my family comes over they remark on the wonderful smell and they cant believe its coming from such a small tree...lol but seriously I think I need to remove some grass from around the bottom and water less and feed more maybe? The blooms are amazing but the leaves/growth is weird and not as green as yours.

My improved meyer lemon is finally holding the few green lemons. The flowers are abundant but the fruit always drops. I bought it from Lowes when it had only 3 leaves in a #5 pot. They had marked it down %75 to $6. In a year it quadrupled in size and is chugging along! Its finicky though and has a mind of its own.

Hey Bada:

Looks great. Pictures are fine. Did you put in drip irrigation? In regards to your Moro, mine has been in the ground since 2010 and this year has really been going to town with foliage growth. It is now over 5' high and probably the same or a bit less in width. While it isn't putting out any blooms, I think it is concentrating all its energy into growth. However, as far as performance goes, my Rio Red Grapefruit is your Moro..... While it is putting out lots of blooms, it just doesn't seem to be rather vigorous, and it is supposed to like heat and the sun.

I wish I understood grafting. It looks like you are going great guns with the Tarroco project.

And, I can see that in several months I probably will not have to buy and more lemons, just pick from my Meyer....

Talk to you later,

Peter

I just returned from my evening bicycle ride. I ride around through the residential area here most nights after supper. On a still night after a warm day this time of year, it is amazing to smell the citrus blooming in back yards. There are a lot of homes with a backyard tree or two that isn't visible from the street because they're shorter than the block fences. The smell of the blooms is the give away though. Awesome time of year.

Peter, it's funny that you have a laggard tree too, but yours is Ruby GF and mine is the Moro. Also funny that your not seeing blooms on your Moro either. At my previous house I had a Moro that was pretty vigorous and moderately productive. I have some little mandarin grafting projects in #1 containers that are only one foot tall and blooming away, but the Moro in the ground is nada, zip, squat for blooms. I really like fresh off the tree Moro oranges, so the lagging tree is a big disappointment.

Blazeaglory, I wish I could take credit for the color of my trees, but it's mostly due to the mild winter here. The weather allowed me to get the early spring mineral feeding done back in mid February. Peter has a thread over at the citrus specific forum (I think it's frowned on to post off site links here?) about the opportunity to start fertilizing early this year. I posted a couple responses there about what I was doing.

I wish I had room for a Meyer lemon, but I was only allotted half the backyard by SWMBO (she who must be obeyed). Room for 5 citrus and one pomegranate. I had a Meyer at my old place and it was a tree I loved/hated. Loved because it would produce so much if treated half way decently, but hated because it wouldn't look really good unless you had the conditions perfect- which I never managed. A neighborhood friend has an established Eureka and Lisbon, so I can beg for my lemons fairly easily.

Peter..lolololol..I needed a great laugh man!lol

You know, I think this will be a much better year for me since now that I am able to walk, I will be able to treat my trees the best I know how.

By the way, I thought I just caught a whiff of your trees from my end..Or am I just dreaming about it?

Great work Peter!

Bada!!!Those are the type of trees we all dream for here. They look so nice and thank you for sharing.
I guess we can all agree that temps plays a very large role on the coloring of our trees even though all the nutrients in the soil can are readily available for the taking! Just need to get them temps warm enough to encouarge the roots to do their job.

Mike

Bada,

You know! I forget to tell you how proud I think 'Rhizo' would be if she saw the way your trees looked with that mulch around your trees. Love it myself! Looking very nice.

Mike

Bada,

May I ask where you found the seville sour orange root stock and the tarocco bud wood?

Have you compared the tarocco and moro in tucson? Which flavor do you prefer?

Your trees look awesome.

'Turtleman', the owner of RSIgrowers in Mesa, helped me track down the Seville SO stock. He grows liners of it every year for his own commercial grafting use and sometimes has excess finished liners for sale. He was over contracted this year for his liners though. He put me in contact with some nice people at Paradise Nursery, also in Mesa, who sold me a couple of Seville SO trees in #3 pots. They had maybe a 100 nice #3 Seville trees there a month ago. If they still have some, you may have to go through RSI to buy from them though, they are mostly a wholesale nursery.

RSI has sold Tarocco trees in the past but the website currently shows sold out. I got the Tarocco budwood from a tree that originated from RSI. Turtleman was extremely helpful, I'd say you can't go wrong dealing with RSI if he has or can get what you want.

I have tried Tarocco a few times from a couple trees belonging to acquaintances. I had a 6 year old Moro that produced fruit fruit for me 4 years 2007-2010. The Tarocco is a later maturing variety, and may taste a bit better if it has a good mild winter to finish. The Moro is earlier: Dec-Jan and colors up more than the Tarocco. I like blood oranges a lot and would be happy with just Moro fruit. Getting a Tarocco is a way to extend the fresh availability season more than anything. After seeing the friendly debate between the Florida and California growers over the merits of their fruit, I'd add that they need to experience an 'Arizona sweet blood' right off the tree. The combination of scorching hot summer rolling into cool to cold (for citrus) winter can make a remarkable orange.

I got to pick a few Moros off my former tree last month. They didn't color up as much as in years previous and this one is almost the last I have in the fridge. They were still pretty good, kind of like a good Trovita with a hint of raspberry.
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Here is a link that might be useful: RSI growers