Lovely orange tree
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Thanks guys, I am really happy with this tree and I am really amazed that it’s producing as well as it is for such a young tree.
It looks like I will have to skirt it a bit higher once the crop is off.
Mick
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Mick, do you know what kind of rootstock your navel orange is on…is it standard or semi-dwarf. I’m curious to correlate that to it’s size and age.
John
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Man, you should be grateful! I know a lot of people who would love to change places with you if they could grow citrus like that outside, regardless of the drawbacks. Having been in both extremes , I can tell you I prefer the heat every time.
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My Washington Navel is off bearing, one great year, one pretty good year. Over and over 
Try thinning the fruit right after the natural drop. It must be oversetting. Mine never did that and I didn’t thin.
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I’ll give that a try next spring. This year is the buff year 
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My finger lime is just as stingy with producing fruit…
I don’t know if it’s too immature or not, but mine looks to be a little larger than yours and still has not set a single fruit.
Scott
You know, finger lime is not in the same Genus as Citrus so getting the same performance is a false expectation.
G’day John
Unfortunately I don’t know if what root stock it is on but it is most likely to be a non dwarfing variety as at the time I wasn’t trying to get more trees into the space of my backyard. We have been in this house for 4.5 years and it and the Myer lemon were the first trees I planted, probably a month or so after. It is 6’ high by 8’ diameter.
I hope this helps.
Mick
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Hi @TheNiceGuy, truthfully I don’t know how you guys cope with such awesome cold. I spent a Christmas with my sister in Toronto some years ago and I am sure I felt the lard on my belly go hard with the cold. Give me the subtropics any day.
Mick
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Mick, you must have fertile soil to get such nice growth in 4 years. Is the weather real hot there…I’m guessing you’re up around the Brisbane area?
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Hi John, you hit the nail on the head! South east suburban Brisbane it is. The climate is mild with winter temperatures down to the mid 40’s f and the summer days mid 80’s to mid 90’s. We do some times hit the low 100’s.
Talking about soil, our home is built on a 1980’s estate where the profiles were altered to suit. Consequently, I have about 10" of imported topsoil with rock underneath. Basically what I do is mulch heavily, water weekly in the blossoming, growing and fruit development times and fertilise at the change of the seasons. That way I don’t forget to feed it and all it’s mates.
Mick
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Do you have any experience coaxing finger limes to fruit? Mine flowers well, but doesnt’ seem to want to set fruit.
Then again my poncirus doesn’t want to set fruit either, though it has only bloomed for the first time this year. My poncirus is over 6 feet tall, though…
My meyer lemon, however, loves setting fruit for me.
Scoitt
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I was when I lived in Phoenix. Citrus there hangs on the tree improving in ripeness for two or more months. In those days, almost pest free. One citrus tree, the Kumquat, made a lovely small street tree and produced $4 a pound fruit. The less you pruned citrus, the better they looked.
Now I try and grow blueberries. Go figure.
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Personally, I’d much rather grow Bearss Lime than Finger Lime … and I have no motivation to grow poncirus.
I lost my Bearss lime this winter, which makes me sad cause it was a plant I rescued years ago from my citrus tree supplier (one of those Charlie Brown trees he had at the end of the season). Lost the top half of my original Aussie finger lime this winter too, but its bounced back with good growth, some blossoms, but no fruit set. After the worse (by far) winter we’ve had in over 50 years, I’m happy to let my surviving citrus collection recoup & recover from that ordeal. At least 8 of them I thought had died but have slowly come back to life from the edge of frozen death. This is what happens when you try to grow limes, lemons, & other subtropical/tropical citrus in Canada. Even though I’m zone 7b/8a most of the time, we were below freezing for roughly 3 months this past winter with temps as low as -15C (5 F), when most citrus don’t do well with below freezing temps for more than a few hours/days.
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The Font of All Knowledge (Wikipedia) says finger lime is Citrus australasica. Are regular citrus not Citrus?
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Taxonomically, I believe all plants we think of as “citrus” are in the Tribe Citrinae of Family Rutaceae. Of these, many are in the Genus Citrus but there are a few outliers such as kumquat in Genus Fortunella.
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gold nugget mandarins are good and are cold resistant
mine dropped leaves at below 14 degrees just like the yuzu but grew back fine in spring
but i wrapped the gold nugget and not the yuzu
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