Hi, Thanks for the insight. It is a purple smoke. I'm in zone 5b and we did have an unusually long winter this year....hopefully that's the reason and it'll come back next year. You provided me with some hope... Thanks again. Kat

@GregBradley: Thanks. Johnmerr made a similar point about my lawn possibly imposing harmful effect on my citrus trees. This is new info for me...Thanks. FYI, I use the black rings to keep the grass away from the tree truck, and not to keep the mulch around the tree. The ring also acts as a bumper guard for my lawn mower:). Also, in the photo you may have noticed the gray PVC trunk guard around the base of the tree used to protect it from my weed wacker. Now that I think back, several weeks before my Variegated lemon tree started to loose it's leaves, I did some heavy de-thatching on my lawn. After removing the thatch, I've been trying to bring the greenness of the lawn back with applications of lawn fertilizer (high nitrogen) every 3 weeks, and watering via sprinkler twice daily. In conjunction with the above, we've been had some heavy down pours caused by a passing hurricane. So as you said, it's most likely a combo of those factors (water, drainage, fertilizer, weak cultivar) coming together wrong for the lemon tree. Think I'll do as Johnmerr recommends, and see it shows any signs of coming back. If it don't, I'll replace it with something else. May even switch to planting a pomegranate tree. Aloha, Gadget

It seems like some of them do not produce flowers at all or probably do at a unusually low rate. I would look to get only the varieties advertised with pictures of flowers. My guess for why they don't bloom is they may have been irradiated to produce mutants (e.g. variegated ones). It's relatively common practice in Thailand to irradiate plants so these variegated mutants cultivars show up. Their horticultural industry is well known for producing variegated plants. Compare to Hawaii which probably has a longer history of cultivating plumerias but not one well known variagated cultivar has come up into the mainstream.

if you prune the vine early, you can get two subsidiary vines where that single vine was lopped off. That would have the desired effect, which is to put more growth closer to the ground. If that is your goal then it is true to a degree. But is "more growth closer to the ground" really the goal when growing tomatoes? Rather than say plant health, production, fruit quality, fruit size, etc.? And you also have to balance the effect on the plant of doing that. You now have secondary stems rather than primary. Smaller in size, potentially weaker, reduced circulatory systems in both means less nutrient and water transport, etc. And how many times could you do it without severely affecting the plant? Would the reduced circulation be exponential? 1 into 2, 2 into 4, 4 into 8, 16, 32, etc. It is a trade-off that just isn't worth IMO. But to each his own because what works for one may not work for another. but I've never had much success in doing that. I put them in distilled water, and wait and wait for roots to form. They usually don't. Yep lots of discussions on 'rooting cuttings' or 'clones' here and many with pictures included. I do some 30-50 of them each July for planting out in August to replace exhausted plants. Basically it boils down to 3-5" growth tip cuttings (not leaves, no leaf branches, etc. only suckers or growing tips), strip off any leaves except the cluster on the tip, insert the stem 2-3" deep in a small pot of moist potting soil (never water), and set it out of the sun. It will droop for about 2 days then begin to perk up. Keep it well moistened and within 8-10 days it will be rooted in place. Transplant tot he garden at the proper time. That hasn't been quite my experience with Sweet-100s. Can't really compare the growth patterns of the manic cherry varieties to standard tomato plants. Very different animals. They grow in such an explosive, unrestrained manner that many question if they are really tomato plants and suspect that Sweet 100, Sweet Million, and similar monsters are secretly conspiring to take over the world. Dave