Week of March 22, 2020

One of the joys of March in the Florida Garden is ORANGE BLOSSOM TIME.  The winter was rather mild and I was able to do some aggressive pruning and feeding in January and February, leaving several weeks for new leaves and buds to form.  The judgement of my pruning comes now, with the pattern and amount of blossoms and new fruit.  We have some good news to report on several of the citrus trees planted 4-5 years ago.  The blood orange did not bloom at all last year and has one or two blooms now.  Especially exciting is my Navel orange tree which has never bloomed, now with several clusters of blossoms.  The Meyer lemon which had only two blooms  producing two lemons last year is now loaded with blossoms, with 14+ clusters.  The two Key limes still hold a few fruit, but are also starting to bloom.  The backyard is perfumed with the tangerine trees.  There are quite many blossoms on the Temple orange, and fewer on the Satsuma and honey Murcott.  This is OK because these trees fruited too strongly last year and we would welcome fewer fruit this year to let the tree rest.  The same is true of the two grapefruit trees , which supported huge crops requiring propping up limbs last year.  The grapefruit yields appear mixed.  There are no buds on the Persian Lime, the Valencia orange which I planted a few months ago, the kumquat and the Ponka tangerine, though early on so far.  We will look forward to the growth and ripening of their fruit as we near the summer.