rhizo and softmentor, thank you both for your input about the mulching. I've just finished mulching my little citrus area with pine bark mulch, so it would be too late to remove all the mulch now. What I did was I left 1-2 ft around the trunk area bare and hope that will help to prevent root rot. Before the whole area was filled with weeds. There's a golden rain tree in the neighbor's yard that overhangs. It keeps sending seeds that sprout like crazy. I was too tired to fight with them and of course other assortment of agressive weeds which was the reason for my idea of mulching. Yes, rhizo, I'm weary of the fungus infection. I'll certainly take note to avoid overwatering from now on. The only problem here in Fl is sometimes we do get very wet rainy season that rains for days on end like at the present time. Softmentor, you must have an incredible variety of citrus trees. 100 trees is a lot of trees. Are you growing all of them for a hobby? I wish I have that much land to grow that many. At the moment, I have 14 different kinds of citrus (5 of them are lemon/lime) and I have 3-4 spots left to plant orange trees. What would you recommend for my planting zone? I prefer those I can make juice out of and of course are disease resistant. Thanks again for any help you can offer.

We use Roundup under all of our trees, and normally hit the trunks. No problem at all, and no toxicity ever, UNLESS we hit green leaves and twigs out at the edge of the canopy. We're pretty good at avoiding that. The commercial industry commonly sprays the trunks of the trees with Roundup, again, with no damage. You do have to avoid that on very young trees, which still have some green bark. But once it turns grey/brown, you're ok. If you can find it, a herbicide with fluazifop-p-butyl will do a nice job of killing Bermuda grass and other true grasses (but not weeds in any other plant family). We last bought it as Ornamec brand; we've had it in the past as Fusilade, Fusilade 2000, and Grass-B-Gone. It's slow (3-5 weeks for a complete kill, and may require a second application), but it is systemic and it does work. Malcolm M. Manners John and Ruth Tyndall Professor of Citrus Science Florida Southern College Lakeland

Thanks for the reply. Do they harm the tree and how do I get rid of it?

The reason i mulch is that grass steals water and nutrients from the tree. Keeping the drip area or farther open helps the tree. Yes 4 feet beats three and is worth it IMHO. I mulch to slow down the grass and weeds. Everything else is gravy. As far as Redwoods and 13-13-13 is people forget we are not talking about forest trees here. A peach tree left on it's own will bear so much fruit it's branches will break and invite disease in. Needless to say it will die. We are talking about feeding domesticated trees, not wild ones. The fruit trees will not survive without our care. Well many of them. Also don't let dwarf fool you, not many trees are genetic dwarfs, so they are reduced by rootstock selection. This method doesn't work that well. 15 feet tall is very possible. Unless you have genetic dwarfs the best way to control size is by pruning to the height you desire and forget about rootstock, use dwarf, semi-dwarf or regular. I find the non-dwarfing rootstocks are darn good, and I prefer to use them. Like Lovell for peaches. I do like using dwarf rootstock for cherries though. They bear faster and produce well.