Hello,

I am completely new to growing trees, and was absolutely thrilled to get to move to a place where I had some outdoor space I could use, so I put in three little citrus trees (5-gallon size from a reputable nursery) in a space is probably way too small, but I had read up on the "three-in-one-hole" planting method, and thought IÂd give it a whirl.

The space is much like a large container, and the soil is very heavy clay that I tried to lighten up by digging in a bit of sand. The trees I put in are a dwarf owari Satsuma mandarin; what I hoped was a dwarf moro blood orange (the tag was marked moro, but I canÂt remember if I checked carefully to make sure it was a dwarf and not a standard!); and a dwarf Mexican cocktail lime (key lime?). I put them in around early April of this year, and have periodically fed them with organic citrus food (either Dr. Earth or EB Stone, and I most recently gave them something that I think was called "Citrus Power"). The citrus trees get at least 5-6 hours of direct sun every day.

Anyway, the mandarin after a somewhat shaky start bloomed prolifically and after the June drop produced a fair amount of fruit on its lower branches that is ripening nicely.

Question 1: will the skin loosen up as the fruit matures?

My second question is about the blood orange tree. The tag said itÂs supposed to produce fruit from February to May. If that is the case, shouldnÂt it have been in bloom for awhile now? It gave me at least two or perhaps three growth flushes during the spring and summer, but no flowers. Why not? What did I do wrong?

My little lime tree got off to a very slow start, as I understand they are not cold-tolerant, and we had an unusually long, chilly spring this year by L.A. standards, and even though it did rally and eventually have a growth flush with lots of flowers, none developed into young fruit. Should I just try to keep it warm during the cool season and hope for better luck next summer with this one?

Anything else I could try?

Should I continue feeding the trees, or let them go dormant? We traditionally get a heat wave in January here with summer-like daytime temps, but still cold at night.

One thing that might have contributed to the poor performance of the moro and lime tree is that in my inexperience with growing stuff in the ground, I put a couple kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) seeds between the citrus (already in a confined space), and had no notion that they would grow so huge and so fast. That convinced me that the soil has adequate nutrients, but the pumpkins must have gobbled it all up and left none for the trees, except that the mandarin still managed to produce fruitÂÂ

Thanks very much for any thoughts and advice!