For fruit trees of any kind it is not necessary or even desirable to work a lot of organic material into the soil. Just keep several inches of organic mulch on the surface and the trees will do great.

Too much nitrogen and water is detrimental to fruit eating quality of most tree fruits, citrus included. This assumes you want your fruit sweet and flavorful. For lemons and limes, where sweetness isn't as important, it might not matter.

My citrus only has one flush of growth a year. I don't fertilize that much and water deeply but not very often. This gives sweeter navel oranges than a tree that grows a lot because it is being pushed with water and fertilizer.

In CA citrus is put on the poorest soil and does fine.

I do almost nothing for my lemon trees. In fact, last year, I didn't even get irrigation. I'm getting irrigation again, every two weeks in the summer and every month in the winter, flood irrigation, but other than that, little is done to them. They are in heavy clay soil with rock mulch on top. I've fertilized about three times in as many years, when the leaves look yellow.
I get a huge crop of lemons every year. One is meyer lemons, I'm not sure what the other tree is. They are fairly old trees.
I live in AZ so natural rainfall is very little.

I do understand about not using compost or other "sweet" soil.

My thoughts were to use peat moss or ground pine bark to make the soil as perfect for citrus as possible.

Maybe I am over thinking everything....

I too have quit fertilizing, it just makes the trees leggy and pruning is something I would like to do as little as possible.

intresting about the water.... I am soaking my trees which are about 15 feet tall twice a week and I use pinestraw as mulch to help with weeds and dryness.

This summer has been brutal here, instense heat and so little rain I have only mowed the grass once.. ONCE in North Florida where we have a great underground water supply.

I do have one cara cara red navel that is unbelievably slow growing. Got to figure out why on that one. Plenty of sun, backyard faces perfectly south. Have used fertilizer on it and keep it watered nicely on sandy soil that drains well.
It's very pretty, green and no problems with leaf miners or white flies. Just slow growing.
It's 4 or 5 years old and just a runt of a thing. Maybe 3 feet tall, but with nice foliage.

Thanks to all...
J Eppes

I'd avoid the peat moss, but go for compost if you can find it. And rather than pine BARK, see if you can find some slightly aged wood chips (not the bark, but the wood). A layer of either or both of them will soon disappear into your soil. Other good materials would be pine straw, chopped leaves (I run over ours with the mower), etc. Pine bark FINES wouldn't be too bad to use since they have a much smaller particle size than the typical 'nugget'.

Don't be tempted to apply too much at any one time...that will actually slow the decomposition process down and maybe even cause some problems for the tree roots. And do NOT pile your mulch up against the trunks of the trees.

Replace the mulch as often as needed, you'll be surprised at how quickly it 'melts' away. But it is a project that will require that little bit of labor for a very long time. There is no quick fix. But know that each and every time you apply a layer of good compost, you are improving the soil and increasing (and feeding) the beneficial microbial population.