afnetman
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Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2013 9:06 am

Newly formed fruit vanishing off my citrus trees

I have two orange trees, a mandarin (all three grown in pots) and an orange and grapefruit tree growing in the ground. All trees flowered and started to bear fruit this year as normal. I have watered as I normally did in the past years and the fruit was developing normally. All of the sudden in the past two weeks the fruit started disappearing off the trees. I looked on the ground for the falling fruit but I do not see any. I live in Spain near Barcelona and the climate is good for growing this fruit. I have not seen any bugs crawling on the trees either. Could there be some animal or bird that is eating the newly developing fruit off the trees?

gumbo2176
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Location: New Orleans

How old are these trees? Sometimes fruit trees will drop developing fruit to get it into a range it can afford to bear. However, your post sounds like all the fruit is gone. Depending on the size of the missing fruit, I would think you'd see some traces of it on the ground if it is just dropping the immature fruit. To not see any trace of it leads me to think something is eating it from the tree, but that is just an assumption by me.

Some things that cause fruit drop are leaf footed insects, excessive water, dry heat and soil with low potassium levels can be a culprit.

Phoenix1110
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Joined: Mon Jul 29, 2013 3:42 pm

We too are have a issue were our fruit on our orange trees have been disappearing. About a month ago we had up to 20 small green oranges on our orange trees within a span of about 3 days the small green oranges just disappeared. We look around our yard and there is no sign of were the fruit has gone. We live in north Florida area I've been searching for even a clue with no luck any help would be nice.

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ReptileAddiction
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Location: Southern California

I have a feeling that it is rodents. I am having problems with them too right now. Do you see droppings? They blend in with the soil easily so it is kinda hard to find them in the soil. Look behind things and stuff to see if they drug the fruit there to eat it because they usually leave a big mess.

TRANSPLANTWEST
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Joined: Sun Aug 14, 2022 3:34 am

We're in Florida in the USA, Ponderosa lemon tree on the front porch, up off the ground. The unripe lemons disappear, I thought I had one this year that was going to make it, it was 1 1/2 times the size off a golf ball. Next morning, it's gone. Nowhere to be found. Unless the UPS driver likes unripe lemons we're lost. lol.

imafan26
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Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

Usually when that happens to us the critters have two legs. Thieves pick a tree clean, they don't care if the fruit are ready to pick or not.



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