Young Trees Dropping Fruit.
I have a few citrus fruit trees about three years old. They have made a
good growth and are between seven and eight feet high with a good shaped
top or head. I did not expect any fruit last year and did not have any.
This spring they blossomed irregularly at blooming time, but quite an
amount of fruit set and grew as large as marbles, some of it the size of
a walnut, but lately it has about all fallen off the trees.
There is always more or less dropping from fruit trees. Some years large
numbers of oranges drop. There may be many causes, and the trouble has
thus far not been found preventable. When the foliage is good and the
growth satisfactory, the young tree is certainly not in need of
anything. It is rather more likely that fruit is dropped by the young
trees owing to their excessive vegetative vigor, for it is a general
fact that fruit trees which are growing very fast are less certain in
fruit-setting. It is, of course, possible that you have been forcing
such action by too free use of water. You will do well to let your trees
go along so long as they appear thrifty and satisfactory, and expect
better fruiting when they become older.
Orange Training.
Is not a single leader in an orange tree more desirable than the
much-forked tree so commonly seen! Can a single-leader tree be made from
the nursery trees which have already formed their heads, by cutting off
the heads below so that only a straight stick without any branches is
left?
An orange tree with a central leader would not be at all satisfactory if
it were carried very high.
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