I hope you guys in the north will be getting warmer weather soon! We are in the 60’s here today with thunderstorms and tornadoes lol. Not much change here, except my Bearss Lemon is flowering for the first time!

My eureka, PVE, and key lime are all loaded with blooms. The rest of my trees all have new growth. I have a premium sanguinelli from FWG being delivered tomorrow - hoping it has a few flowers :). Looking forward to seeing everyone’s pictures!

Great Kelley! I have a range of outcomes...some trees have not lost one leaf, others have lost many. I’ll try to post pics when I can. Not many pest issues this year, thankfully. I think leaving them out a bit longer helped kill them off. I still am counting the days till I can take them out and hose them off!

2 seed grown Meiwa kumquats in greenhouse.

Seen through 4 layers of dirty glass.

Meiwa kumquat trees from seed inside house

The largest above. Second largest below.

Fukushu on C35 up

New Zealand lemonade on US897. above and below

Looking good Steve!

Here's my blood orange. The root stock has had 2 flushes this Winter (I chopped it off) and 1 flush on the orange part and now this small new growth coming in. I believe their was a guy asking about new growth on new growth like this.

Below are photos of the ponderosa. I just found a second cluster of blooms.

Here's the ugly....
And here's my banana plant... It's almost 3' from dirt to the top of leaf

Here are three from my backyard, the sweet lime on the right, Meyer in the middle and the orange on the left.

The sweet lime has several blooms, so I am excited! I do like the flavor of the fruit, low acid, and very floral, not like anything I can get at the store!

My hardworking calamondin

The keylime is awfully yellow, and i wonder if the big Meyer within a few feet is stealing its nutrition!

The Eureka variegated is not too happy either, but is blooming well, so I'm hoping it will recover when the weather warms up

Not a citrus, but my California lilac is getting ready for a bloom!

Also not citrus, but the plum and pluot are starting to bloom!

KC

Great to see y'all's trees! Hope to post a few March update photos soon.

KC, please, rimeind me of what state you live in? I can picture myself there looking up at those beautiful clouds with those beautiful trees in that warmer than nice weather than what I have. I would move there in a hart beat for that right now. I am really considering a change. Very nice piece of land with nice windows to boot. If you plan on selling, let me know. Ha. I mean it. Those buds on your Eireka are stunning and almost red.Thank you. Warm enough to plant trees in the ground and come out looking like that at the end of winter? Crazy. You are like 2 months ahead of me in the blooming department on that plum.

Dave, nothing "ugly" about what you have there. It's green even if small and just perfect. Thank you. Great jop. I plan on chopping a few on mine back this spring again. I love it when they flush really thick.

Steve, no matter what you grow your trees in, you have it figured out. Great work. Very nice.

This year I decided to keep my 'Ponderosa' very cold and it looks horrible but still alive. It has gotten really yellow on my leaves, but it will come back strong once it goes back outside and the warmth gets to it)

Bob, geez, and indoor citrus grove you have there. It mjst smell heavenly and they all look so nice after a wintering them inside. I see an Aloe in front of the car I think, and lots of figs coming alive! Will you be putting them out soon, your figs that is and will you be pinching them back and when? Any re potting on them or will you let them awaken and stay in the same pots?

Kelley, you are so lucky to live down there minus the tornadoes of course. I would pay to let my trees sit outside by now and in storms to boot. Like steriods them storms can be. I wish. They are looking good and thank you. Right now its in th 20's and feel like -0 tonight and teens tomorrow. When will it all end? Just yesterday I saw 50's on the ten day forcast, now today not a one. You can't trust the long range outlook! What a joke. All I see is forties now. Depressing for sure.

Has anyone here ever tried a 'bears lime'? Boy do the leaves have a strong citrus fragrance. I LOVE this tree even out of flower or fruit.

Mike, come visit!! I live in the San Francisco bay area about half way between San Francisco and San Jose, and it is gorgeous! (And expensive!!) Especially this year with all the rain we are getting! Like I said, perfect weather, except it would be nice to have a few warm nights, but no, year round we drop to upper 40s, low 50s after sunset! Thanks for the compliments, we deliberately kept the landscaping on the natural side, the grass is a bent grass that doesn't need mowing, and most plants are drought tolerant except for the fruit trees and roses.

And some folk tell me my persian lime is also a Bearss lime, but I had a Bearss in my other house and it was bigger and more vigorous than this rather delicate Persian lime! I should see if I have a label saved somewhere! Be right back :D

KC

Mike don't what plant that is, just a gift from a friend that moved to Florida, figs are going to their spot in the yard April 15, a long time to go, like picture taking last year.

Ok, never mind then! There was a label, and I have totally misremembered what lime I planted! It is a Mexican lime! The label says also a key lime, and confirms it is smaller than the Bearrs I had!

Thanks, Mike, for asking a question that made me go look!

Here is a March update from me.

Exciting to see LOTS of bloom buds and even one that's open now on the Dancy tangerine.

A honeybee on a meyer lemon blossom

There was also a big ole bumble bee on a peach bloom so I snapped a photo of it too

And, lastly, my moro blood orange is going to bloom again soon. This tree froze to the ground maybe eight or so years ago. It sure looks like it had to get a leaf node count again so I'm wondering if it's really going to be blood orange. The blooms are all pretty high in the tree. Most of our local citrus is grafted on trifoliate roots. This certainly isn't trifoliate and the leaves grow in thick bunches like another blood orange I ultimately killed (R.I.P.) so we shall see. The stump flares out at the base where the roots begin so, again, no sign of the graft.

I didn't get any photos but I tried some grafts today. I needed to prune a limb off of a small Satusuma orange so I tried grafting some of the buds that were sprouting off the pruned limb. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing so I probably put some of the buds in doomed locations but hopefully I tried enough different grafts so that a few may take, All of the recipients were Ponderosa lemons.

The flower buds on 2 clusters of blooms on my NZL finally started opening last week so snapped a couple pics -

I will confirm that compared to the other citrus, you really DO have to stick your nose all the way into the flower of a NZL to smell anything. It's that faint. lol I also have some buds starting up on my key lime and I think the Thai lime too, plus some new growth on both of those so have to grab some pics of them. Haven't seen any flower buds on the basement citrus yet. The Eureka still has one completely yellow lemon on it that I really really really need to pull off now. lol

This seed-grown calamondin tree bloomed for the first time three or so years ago so I'm not getting too much hope up for first fruits but it's making another go at it. I forget how many years ago I planted the seeds but it's in the neighborhood of 13 years ago I'm guessing. It's about 18ft tall, has huge thorns up the trunk, and is spindly. Here is a general photo that's a little hard to see due to other trees in the background and then here is a photo of one of the flowers in the tip top branches.

We live in Goleta which is adjacent to Santa Barbara on the central coast of California and have 13 citrus trees. For the most part our citrus have done ok, in what has been a colder than usual, longer than usual, and wetter than usual winter. The mature trees have done better than our young ones.

Here is our Valencia, a mature tree planted in 1993. We get fruit almost all year.

This is our mature Eureka - a real work horse...we use these lemons almost daily.

Our Satsuma Mandarin is only two years old and didn't give us a crop this last year. We are hoping it hangs in there.

This Navel dates back to 1993 and has never been very large, but two years ago it had a growth spurt and now we are getting a small but reliable crop.

This is a Persian lime, about three years old. It really didn't like the cold weather

.

This Key lime was planted in 1997 and is a beast. It produces loads of fruit all year long. We can't give the fruit away fast enough. Sadly some end up in the green waste every year.

Three year old Algerian tangerine has yet to produce fruit.

My Dwarf Nagami Kumquat has finally grown up!

Some of you might recall the thread I started a few years ago asking if it will ever grow up. After being transplanted from a large pot into another large pot over several years, I finally planted it in the ground -- and it found its happy home!

Here's a collage of 3 photos showing the progress from 2015 when it was still a happy prolific little Charlie Brown kumquat, to the happy prolific little tree it is now in March 2019. I could not be happier! I feed it with E.B. Stone Citrus & Fruit Tree Food according to the package directions. This spot faces south and gets direct sun from about noon until sunset.

https://photos.smugmug.com/Garden/Citrus/Kumquat-Nagami/i-wPZm7qz/0/61501d94/L/kumquat-L.jpg

Well shoot, I can't seem to post the photo instead of the link. Normally I'm good at this but it's not working.

auntiejenny - if you can save that image to your hard drive (or storage if using a mobile device) and then select the "Photo" (camera) icon below the message box, search for what you saved, select it and hit "open", then you could hopefully post it that way.

Edit - trying that for you!

Thank you. I tried to do that from SmugMug but it didn't work. I've done it a bazillion times before, so it's not like i'm a newbie.

Remember those pics with my Meyer completely covered with blooms? Well, here's the same tree, this time completely covered with lemons, lol. I have never seen that many lemon buds survive and start plumping up. I mean, i know many are going to fall, but that's still pretty darn impressive. At least to me.

I am now watering (and feeding) my trees twice a week. They're still on a 1 tsp of Vinegar/1 seringe of FP each time I water them. By the time I'm done, water is pouring down the pots and half way up the saucer. Then the fun part starts.... Draining it, bleah.

I've just done a Neem drench with my last watering, by adding about a Tsp and a half of Neem oil and a few drops of soap to my water/vinegar/FP. Not taking the chance of an infestation less than a month before they go out.

Speaking of which, i can't wait to put them out and have my Dining room back!

Not much to report on the smaller tree... Had quite a few lemons already, that are steadily getting bigger.

I'll be back to comment on everyone's trees, but I have to go take care of mom for now.

God bless,
.
Atheen

Lynda, do you see much of a difference between the Persian and the key lime? My key lime is definitely working hard this year, but I've been told the persian is very similar and not worth acquiring if you have a key lime!

Too bad I live too far to come down and save some from the green waste!!

KC

My Meyer Lemon tree made it through the winter and never went inside. Using C9 lights and frost cloth really makes a difference! I was worried it wouldn't make it considering that I planted it in September and it might not have time to grow a root system before winter. But now, it's covered in blooms.

The flowers really do smell amazing.

Same can be said for the Clementine mandarin orange, but the flowers aren't as developed. I predict that most of the fruit will drop because it is a new tree, but it's still a good sign to see!

Almost everything is in bloom right now, posting a pic of my variegated eureka lemon blooming and w/ purpleish new growth

24 F tonight so I brought my grafted meiwa in for the 2nd time in 2 weeks.

kcandmilo Sorry for the late reply. We have five lime trees - a key, a persian, 2 kaffir and a sweet lime. The key and kaffir are different enough that the uses don't overlap. In retrospect the persian and sweet lime get used in the same way as our prolific key lime. If space were at a premium, I wouldn't feel I needed all of them.