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Is there still time to get more flower blossoms on lemon tree?

11 years ago

my lemon tree was severely damaged by the frost. it basically looked like a 10 foot dead stick in the ground, but I trimmed and fertilized it with AZ's Best a few weeks ago, and it has now grown many leaves and looks healthy.

The only problem is I've only seen about three flowers on it. Am I going to be out of luck because it needed all its strength to grow new leaves? For instance last summer, it had a ton of flowers which turned into a lot of lemons, too many to count... but the frost killed 90% of them and all the leaves.

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Comments (5)

eahamel
11 years ago
It may rebloom. Or it may not. We had a bad freeze about 3 years ago when mine was blooming, and I lost most of the blooms, and I think it did rebloom some, but I only got a dozen lemons that year.
rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
11 years ago
You are correct in thinking that the plant finds it difficult to recover its foliage after a devastating loss PLUS devote energy to flower production. Woody plants, if allowed to react normally to such loss will allocate their carbon resources to the most essential need.

We know that plants manufacture all of their own food in the leaves. If the leaves are removed for any reason, the plant will remetabolize stored reserves in order to grow more leaves. This is an annual and expected event with deciduous plants....they are programmed to begin storing energy, mostly in the roots, in the early fall. That's what gives them the carbon reserves to begin growing in the spring.

Citrus and other evergreens aren't really genetically set up for massive defoliation and it can be very stressful. They can only do so much....and if left to their own devices will establish the best priories. We interrupt this process by heavy pruning or excess fertilization.

Does all of this make sense? Your job is to allow your plant to recover at its own pace. Do not think of fertilizer as medicine. It should be used only if needed and very conservatively.

If the tree flowers and produces fruit, great! It will have done so because it could...it was allowed to. We support the growth and development of our trees but we want them to achieve normal growth, not accelerated growth.

So, don't be discouraged if you miss a year of production. Your tree will eventually "take care of business ".

By the way, your tree may be very susceptible to pest attacks after a defoliation. Natural pest resistance also takes carbon resources that the plant just doesn't have. Watch out for spider mites and scale.
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Madeline, Fertilizer brands tend to change by area but as long as it has the micro nutrients designed for fruit trees it will be fine. I just use a 10-10-10 but 8-8-8 is fine or 14-8-8 But again make sure it has the micro nutrients in it. What I do is look at the spread of the tree canopy and go with a pound of fertilizer per foot of canopy width. So if the canopy is 6 feet across you need 6 pounds of fertilizer which would be 12 cups. Some people use circumference of the tree to gauge the amount or age but my way is pretty simple and it does not need to be exact. You would fertilize 3 times a year...start like March then June then September roughly. But for your tree I would feed it about every 6 weeks until it gets all green and happy again. Spread the fertilizer starting 2 feet from the trunk (no closer) out to a foot beyond the dripline of the widest limbs as the dripline or just beyond is where most of the feeder roots are.
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Thanks for all the responses! Ok so just to clear up and provide some more information..... I wouldn't say the tree is young since I've had it for about 18 years. It's about 4 feet tall and about three feet wide. It has set as many as 12 lemons (typically 8-10) each year. It is healthy and has plenty of leaves and strong growth each summer outdoors. As for "perfect" flowers, I have always seen only some with the female parts and others without the styles, for as long as the tree has flowered. So I assumed that pollination would help. Having said that, the ratio of "allegedly" male to female flowers was always about 50/50, so not really an issue. The only reason I posted now, after several years of success, is that there is but one lonely "female (or "perfect") blossom, and the rest (about 26-30) have only the pollen-bearing stamens, but no styles. There are about 20 more unopened flowers, so it remains to be seen what they will look like. So after reading all you replies, it seems my tree is, for some reason, not producing flowers as they should be. Could it be environmental, even though the tree grows well and has for many years? Could it be a genetic quirk? At least my sunroom smells great right now! Thanks again to all.
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thisisme
11 years ago
Valley wide in Arizona our soil has some deficiencies. Arizona's Best Citrus Food is formulated specifically for our soils and should be used on a schedule. Having said that. Freeze or no freeze. Giving to much fertilizer at the wrong time can cause a tree to stop flowering in favor of producing more leaves and new growth.
greenman28 NorCal 7b/8a
11 years ago
How did it get that gnarly wound?

Josh
grumpyinaz
Original Author
11 years ago
The wound on the tree is from a branch that snapped off from too much weight (of the lemons).

So... nothing left to do now other than water and wait?

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