Jimmy, you don't mention if this is a grafted tree or a seedling? If a seedling, not that unusual. Grafted, that would be well overdue for fruit.

Patty S.

Patty, I believe it was from seeding.
I heard that there are some fertilizer that I should try that
actually would "force" a tree to flower ??
Do you know anything about this?

Jimmy

Hi Jimmy,

I think your tree may be a seedling. I have a tree that I have had for almost 20 years now. It was a seedling of an 80 year old lemon tree that was brought over on the boat from Italy in the early 1920's. since info is too long to rewrite, I am including a link of an older post I started about my lemon tree. If interested, please read both posts, I think they will answer a lot of questions regarding seedling trees and why your tree has not bloomed or fruited.
The link below is of my 2 nd post, so please go to this post and first read the "link" I provided there, which is a link to the 1st orginal post regarding my tree (does that make sense?) then go back and read the post below.
All in all, I tried everything to get my tree to fruit, even the gebberelic (spelling is defintely wrong on this but spelled correctly in my posts), and even that never got my tree to fruit.
It does flower however. And that took the tree over 10 years to do to begin with. I believe my flowers are incomplete and sterile.
Anyway, if you read the first link to the post below then read the actual post below after that, it will give you a lot of info from many others on here.
If you have any questions or cannot get to the orginal 1st post about my tree from the second post below, let me know and I will send that link to.
Christy

Here is a link that might be useful: My lemon tree post #2

Just incase, here is the link to the first post, so please read this post 1st, then read the post from above 2nd. Sorry for being backwards! Christy

Here is a link that might be useful: 1st post about my lemon tree, READ FIRST!

Jacks citrus feed made my libson lemon bloom only got two lemons lol.

I am thinking May be I should try something like the attached photo.

Comments?

Jimmy

This post was edited by JIMMY_SAYAVONG on Mon, Sep 23, 13 at 13:27

Hi Jimmy,
I am not sure if this will help its your situation. I think your blooming issue may not be because of fertilizer, but because it is a seedling. The reason why I sent my posts your way to read was for you to see that most pros on this forum believe seedling citrus do not flower right away or at all because of genetic issues. As people have posted in my previous posts, it may not be flowering because of the number of nodes needed to become mature. Seedlings need a huge amount of leaf nodes to become mature enough to flower which could be almost forever. And if you trim, it starts the node count all over again.
That is why most productive citrus are grafts. They take a branch from a mature citrus, which makes it not need a lot of nodes to bare fruit, resulting in a tree that bares in only a couple of years instead of 20 years!
Although my seedling finally flowered after ten years, you can see the flowers are incomplete and are incapable of ever becoming fruit even though it blossoms. Unless something changes out of nowhere, my poor seedling going on 20 years will never bear fruit :(
I hate to burst your bubble, but I went through the same exact thing as you. And my tree is VERY sentimental to me, and I did everything I could to get it to fruit.
Again, I am no pro, and for your sake, I hope I am wrong and your tree decides to blossom for you! I still have hope for mine one day! Christy

I agree with Bonechick. My cousin grew a grapefruit tree from seed. I think it was a ruby red but I don't remember for sure. Anyhow, he had that tree for YEARS! It was well over 6ft tall, and I think it was 10-15 years old. The year he decided to get rid of it, I think it bloomed but it never fruited.

The tree got to be too big and difficult for him to bring in and out every fall and spring. He ended up turning it into a nice walking stick.

I think it's fun growing tropical fruits from seed, but as far as growing for fruits, it's just too much of a gamble!

I.M.O. you would be much better off ordering a grafted tree. You can get them pretty cheap.

Andrew

I know this is an older posting however, I found a website with the following information.

http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/features/kaflime18.html

"My Kaffir Lime is Large and Healthy but It's Not Fruiting"

If you've had your kaffir lime tree for a few years and it has grown big, lush and healthy-looking with lots of deep green leaves, but it just won't flower and fruit, the problem might be that your plant is not getting enough light. The light can be either sunlight or very bright indirect light over most of the day. If your plant is in a shady spot, you might want to move it to a sunnier spot (do this gradually to acclimate the plant) if it is grown in a planter. If it is in the ground and is surrounded by other tall plants or is near a tree, you can prune the tree or surrounding plants to let in more sun.

If you think your plant is already getting enough light and still is not fruiting, then maybe it's the food you've been feeding it.. You might need to give your plant a fertilizer with a higher phosphorus (the second number in the three-number sequence on the fertilizer label) and potassium (third in the three-number sequence) content than nitrogen (the first number). These major nutrients are needed for fruit formation and for the proper ripening of fruits and seeds. Nitrogen, on the other hand, promotes strong, vigorous growth and when it's excessive in relation to the other two, lush, thick foliage growth can take place at the expense of fruit production.

Here is a link that might be useful: Kaffir Lime Care, Why is There No Fruit?

My kaffir limes, which are grafted, produce fruit in 2 years or less. Most kaffir limes (the best by the way) are grown from seed; and it is not unusual to take 10 or more years to flower. If you want to try "forcing" blooms, the common method is to stress the tree by denying it water until it starts to wilt; then give it water and a good shot of Nitrogen. BTW, that is bad advice for Meyers; but in this case we are talking about kaffirs.

No amount of forcing or fertilising will cause an immature tree to flower. 10 years is not too long for many a citrus seedling. Hormones may do the trick but at the expense of long term tree viability. If you have other citrus flowering under the same light conditions then you should be patient. Be careful with your pruning in case you're pruning out all shoots of high 'age' (in terms of number of nodes). These would be the first to flower as they are the most 'distanced' from the seed.
Nik

Plants cannot be forced to flower with fertilizers, although they can be induced to bloom via methods of stress (as John outlined).

Plants, in general, use MUCH more Nitrogen than Phosphorous. Plus, there's almost always ample P in-ground. Fertilizers promising blooms by way of ridiculous P numbers are nothing more than a gimmick.

Josh

I thought the fruit of kaffir lime tree is too intense in flavor and not desirable. The value of the tree is the leaves and not the fruit. I don't think you're missing anything.

Jimmy

Go to a big box store and get a wiffle ball bat. Use this bat and beat the bowel movement out of your tree from all angles. This will convince the tree that it is dying and it will flower and fruit to push off young. I do this with my tomatoes and it works well.

I AM NOT KIDDING

Don't use a wood bat, it will cause to much damage

Well, there's an old rhyme that promises the same....

"A wife, a dog, a hickory tree, the more you beat them the better they be..."

Josh

Josh

I have heard that won 2. I have been taking advanced classes on gardening. It does work. swing the bat upwards to skin the limbs with out splitting them. Wait till fall/winter then swing away. I will be doing the same when my trees are about 5 years old.

Best of luck

Steve

Jimmy, as Voffer pointed out, the Kaffir lime is grown for its leaves, not its fruit, it really is rather moot if it blooms or not :-) And, Steve, if you can provide research on your theory, that would be helpful. For not, I would refrain from beating your tree, lest you injure it, accidentally.

Patty S.

Its mainly the leaves that are used. The fruit is used for making Thai curry pastes, particularly the zest, the actual fruit seems quite dry at least the ones i have used but the zest has a really strong amazing flavour.

Hmmm, mine is a dwarf from Four Winds, it's only about 4-5 years old, it gives quite a lot of fruit, and they're very juicy. Pretty much as much as a regular Key lime.
It does have a bitter aftertaste, but that is fine in some recipes, and really good in Gin drinks.

I know grafted dwarf trees tend to fruit precociously, so maybe that's why I get a lot of fruit.

You say yours are quite dry, I wonder if there is more than one kind of Thai lime?

All of my friends that have kaffir trees also use the rind of the fruit for cooking. BTW the politically correct name for the Kaffir is now Makrut or Makrout, as the term Kaffir, which was initially a derogatory term meaning infidel, is now in other parts of the world a derogatory term for a black man, roughly equivalent to the N word. I still call them Kaffir lime; because it is what I learned first; but I am trying to refer to them now as Makrout.

I purchased 3ft kaffir lime tree this spring. April. Midwest ,USA. it is outside while the weather is nice and we have 5 flowers already . the other 2 1-2ft tall kaffirs have no flower , as expec expecting for youngling .

I used fertilizeronline.com whole line up. natural soil amendments , rock dust , worm castings and floweting blend. after put rock dust , the formed.

I called and expressed pleasant results and was given code CAG10 for a new customer discount . He told me ok to tell fam and friends . I believe everyone should use so sharing here too

. cheers

Like animals, trees grown from seed must pass through several phases of development before they become sexually mature and capable of producing reproductive parts (blooms/ seeds/ fruit). The plant phases of seed - seedling - juvenile - sexually mature are roughly mirrored in human developmental stages of embryonic - infantile - juvenile - adult/ sexually mature. A freshly sprouted seedling is no more capable of producing reproductive parts (blooms/ seeds/ fruit) than an infant. Too, a plant's aging process is different than an animal's. Where animals age chronologically, plants age ontogenetically. Ontogenetic aging can be thought of in terms of how many cell divisions have occurred to move the plant to its current phase of development. One might reason that the most recent new growth would be the youngest part of the plant, but ontogenetically, it is the the oldest part of the plant because it has taken many more cell divisions to produce the newest parts. Ontogenetically, the youngest part of a tree grown from seed will always be the root to shoot transition area at the base of the trunk, no matter how old the tree is chronologically. Pruning a tree back hard can easily remove all existing mature growth and return it to a juvenile phase that would require a considerable amount of new growth before the wood again becomes mature.

All factors that influence growth rate have an impact on how long (chronologically) it takes a plant to become sexually mature, so thinking that a change in nutrition alone will cause a plant to bloom is misguided. The fastest seedlings to mature within any given species will depend on how proficient Mother Nature or the plant's grower is at providing ideal cultural conditions. Ideal cultural conditions = most rapid growth rate and shortest period of time to reach maturity; this, simply because ideal conditions are most conducive to cell divisions and therefore a fruitful tree at a younger chronological age.

It should be noted that applying nutrients or other products in willy nilly fashion with no knowledge of whether or not there is an actual deficiency of those nutrients or no good reason to apply them is highly likely to be limiting in terms of both growth and rate of maturation. Whenever we discuss what is or isn't an appropriate part of the methodology we use to make certain our plants get all the nutrients essential to growth and good health, we would probably first want to be sure our objectives are on target. It's difficult to argue with the idea that our focus in supplying supplemental nutrition to our plants should be on ensuring all the nutrients plants normally assimilate from the soil are A) IN the soil and available for uptake at all times, B) in the soil in a favorable ratio - that is to say in a ratio that mimics the ratio at which the plant actually uses the nutrient, C) at a concentration high enough to ensure no nutritional deficiencies, yet still low enough to ensure the plant's ability to take up water efficiently, and the nutrients dissolved in that water won't be impeded (by a high concentration of solubles in the soil solution). The part in bold is where growers often run afoul of sound husbandry. By adding unnecessary nutrients we A) skew the ratio of nutrients, each to the others, such that an excess of one nutrient causes a deficiency of one or more other nutrients, and B) make it more difficult for the plant to assimilate water and nutrients.

So, for plants in containers, best results can be had by choosing 1 fertilizer with an appropriate nutrient ratio and all the nutrients essential to normal growth. Forget the snake oil products and claims made on product packaging by sellers whose only goal is separating you from your money. For plants in the landscape, a soil test is ESSENTIAL for any grower aiming at providing the best cultural conditions possible.

"A little extra" is almost always going to be limiting rather than beneficial; otherwise, it wouldn't be "extra".

Al

Well, Jimmy S. is long gone, so I doubt he will never see the current advice. I believe the answer to the tree not setting blooms, therefore no fruit, is because Jimmy prunes the tree every year so that it will fit in his house. Citrus bloom ONLY on the new growth, and if the new growth is pruned off every year the tree cannot bloom.

First, I wasn't addressing Jimmy's issue. I was pointing to the fact that will nilly use of fertilizer offers very little in the way of hope that the application would suddenly force a tree to become sexually mature. Although, I DID say (w/o being as overly broad as you and being careful not to apply it to the original post) that "Pruning a tree back hard can easily remove all existing mature growth and return it to a juvenile phase that would require a considerable amount of new growth before the wood again becomes mature", so it's not as though what you suggest was particularly illuminating or not considered, it just doesn't apply in this case.

The error in your thinking arises from the fact the plant never bloomed or produced fruits, according to Jimmy, who stated only the top was pruned back so the tree would fit under cover of the patio. So, if the tree or individual branches on the tree had reached sexually maturity, there would still have been plenty of opportunity for blooms/fruit on new wood it was not necessary to prune in order to move the tree under cover. After all, he didn't say, and indications are (according to the image he provided), he didn't cut the plant back hard. Not only that, if the plant was pruned back hard in fall in order to move it under cover, if it was already sexually mature, there would be no reason it couldn't/ wouldn't bloom on the current years wood, wood that grew subsequent to the fall pruning.

FWIW, I have many fruit trees that bloom on new wood. They all get pruned back quite hard in either the spring or fall. Typically, for the first year or two after they become sexually mature, blooming (and fruit set when I allow it) is spotty. After the first year or two of hard fall or spring pruning, there would be no conspicuous evidence that the pruning affected formation of reproductive parts.

Al