Posts Tagged: Meyer

What to Expect of Young Trees or Teach your Children Well

The first years of a tree's life are for building a structure for the future. Many varieties of trees are precocious and will bear fruit when they should be building structure. Letting a tree carry fruit when it is too young (under 2 years of age in the ground and some say 5 depending on the tree species) delays future good production and distorts the tree's architecture. A young avocado tree can be completely humbled (brought to ground literally) by the weight of the 12 ounce fruit. ‘Lamb Hass' wants to grow upright, but if the young tree is burdened with fruit early on, it will grow squat and twisted.

Another problem with precocious trees recently came up with ‘Meyer' lemon. Along the coast, this is a tree that will carry fruit throughout the year. It is a small tree naturally, but also because it puts so much energy into fruit production. If allowed to fruit to its full potential early, the canopy development is delayed and the fruit grows unprotected from winds. It is much more subject to wind scarring. Imagine the wind flailing the fruit around with no branches or leaves to protect it. Now the grower has a small, twisted fruit tree and fruit that can't be sold.

Give your young trees a chance to grow without the burden of carrying fruit to early.  They are your children.

 

Imagine all this fruit on a one year old canopy

And this fruit is fully exposed to the elements and wind scarring

Lamb Hass pulling on tree

meyer lemon wound

'Meyer' Lemon and C-35 Citrange Rootstock

Citrus is a messy botany.  It loves to cross with anything  and in so doing creates very complex ancestry.  C-35 rootstock is a citrange and was created for its tolerance to cold, but is also good in Phytophthora situations and creates a slightly smaller tree.  Oddly, it is deciduous, a cross between Poncirus and Citrus.  It's a trifoliate hybrid.  'Meyer' lemon is the same mess, a cross between a lemon and an orange/mandarin.  You would think these two messed up cousins might do well, but in several instances there is an incompatibility.  'Meyer' has been grown successfully on 'Macrophylla' and 'Yuma Ponderosa', both of which are also complex hybrids.

earwigs 2

Wierd Meyers

You see the darndest things in orchards, aside from all the junk that people throw out of their cars.  Here's a case where someone had a little time on their hands and tattooed some fruit in the field.  Apparently it was some pointed object that scared the skin and then it healed over. Maybe this is a new marketing opportunity for Meyer lemons.

 

photo by S. Caughey

wierd meyers

Read more