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Sunday, April 6, 2014

Orange Tree Flowering Now and Not December

Q. We have an orange tree that did not produce any flowers this last December.  Over the last week in March the tree has started covering itself with buds all over.
We inherited the tree when we bought the house last summer so I don't know much about the tree.  Just that its only a couple of years old and produced a couple delicious oranges in December of 2012. I'd love to have some oranges, but is fruit coming this time of year bad for the tree somehow? 

A. No, you are okay with the flowers. They should sail through the summer with no problem. They probably got hit with a couple of freezed we had in December and January. My biggest worry is a late freeze which did not happen so you should be good to go.

The best fruit will have some shade covering so it does not get sunburned. If it is in a container try to double pot it or somehow keep the sun off of the outside of the container. Keep it well watered as you would any other fruit tree or nondesert landscape tree. They do better with some surface wood mulch. Depending on the orange you should have ripe fruit some time late fall or mid winter. Hope this helps.

You may enjoy reading this publication from Arizona on citrus.

1 comment:

  1. They updated that a bit for the MG class in 2011:
    http://cals.arizona.edu/maricopa/garden/html/general/CitrusSupplement2011.pdf
    Most of our citrus in Phoenix blooms in March as well.

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