Hi, we live just south of Tucson in Green Valley. Do your trees currently have buds/blossoms? Ours have lots of blossoms right now, so hoping for a good amount of fruit although the trees are still small. I would be concerned if your trees are not forming blossoms. No blossoms, no fruit, right?

I'm a bit worried about one of our trees. We planted a Cara Cara orange, a Fairchild Mandarin and a Ruby Red Grapefruit. The grapefruit was hard hit in the same cold weather you are talking about, and we also had to cut it down to a couple of feet.

I am bit uncertain about the lower growth - not always sure how many are suckers that should be cut off. Once I could see that the tree was leafing out, I did try to cut most of the growth below the graft line.

We recently fertilized our citrus, also.

If you can get a decent lateral growing upward then the trees should eventually recover.

Make sure any of those lower branches are NOT growing out of the rootstock. Remove them if they are.

I wish I could tell you how to encourage more upward growth. Citrus can take 2-3 years of slow growth post freeze before it takes off again.

Citrus should be fed nitrogen monthly from Feb until early July. I'd mix it in with the water. Infrequent waterings targeting 2 feet down at the canopy line and 50% of the way out. The old labor day adage (Aug-Sept) is now thought bad fertilizer advice as it generates tender leaves that may get frost damaged in late Nov.-Dec. For the first year, no fertilizer is needed. The second year, ü pound of actual nitrogen per tree per year total are needed; ý lb. in the third year; and þ pound in the fourth year. 1 pound thereafter per year per mature tree. Divide it into equal monthly amounts or a bit more in the spring.

I would not prune them other than to remove suckers below the rootstock, any dead material if you want (it will provide some shade and hold frost cloth off of the canopy but may attract borers) and any crisscrossed rubbing branches. But as a general rule you don't prune citrus. It is a natural shrub turned into a tree so should eventually recover from its freeze.

Those are 3 very good varieties. You will want to organic mulch around the trees before summer. I like how the side shoots are developing in all 3. If you can eventually get it up to about 8-9 feet tall they will produce superior fruit.

This post was edited by Fascist_Nation on Thu, Mar 6, 14 at 21:49