Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk AL Garden and Farm Meyer lemon

I've got a meyer lemon tree that got hit by the cold weather this past winter. I cut back the dead branches, fertilized it twice and it's recovered nicely. I expected it to have buds on it by now and I'm concerned that there won't be any this year. Has anyone's meyer lemon tree bloomed yet?

It may come back as rootstock like trifoliate orange or sour orange.

If the limbs came out at the base of the tree you just have root stock sprouts. Are there thorns on the limbs?

It'll probably come back with thorns regardless of whether or not the graft was killed. Ungrafted citrus is thorny, but so are distressed trees. I don't have any lemons, but I had 11 citrus trees severely damaged in early January. All but one survived, but of the ten survivors, only one of them looks to be getting ready to set fruit. I'll have to look again after I get home, but even the least damaged tree of the bunch didn't have any blooms on it before I came back to work.

Just the ends of all the limbs were killed by the cold. The basic frame of the tree is unchanged. All of the leaves look healthy and it's got lots of new sprouts. The thorns are still on the limbs.

I'm in Mobile. You are a little further north and I'm wondering what types of citrus trees you have? Do you cover them in when there's a hard freeze?

I would stick to the satsumas like Owari, very good flavor. I planted mine on the south or east side of my house as close as I could get to the house, the house heat will help protect the trees. Buying colder tolerant stock of trees should help also. A big outdoors store in Foley use to carry a "Mobile root stock" citrus tree that was cold tolerant.

http://mckenzie-farms.com/photo.htm

I have 2 varieties of kumquats, Meiwa and Nagami, 4 trees total. 1 Armstrong and 2 Owari satsumas, 2 blood oranges, and 1 Cara Cara orange. Most years we can get by with just putting a sheet over them when it's cold...this year that didn't help much, but 16° is 16°, and not much would've helped, where they all are. I'll be installing a means of "tenting" all of them this summer for protection from future cold snaps, though. They're in rows, so that'll help some with the configuration of the tent.

Got home yesterday evening, the Owari that was so badly damaged has set fruit, now, and all of the kumquats are blooming...even a cutting I took from a Nagami kumquat a month ago to root had a couple blooms on it!