Frozen Orange, Grapefruit and Lemon Trees. Now what do I do?

[hw4cricket]

Hi, I am new to this type of forum but wanted to say hi and ask a few questions. We moved to Florida from Kansas and have never had Citrus trees before so we were not sure how to handle the frost we had this winter. The trees are fairly young and most were hit by frost bite pretty bad. We did cover them but the cold was much harder than normal this year. They are starting to come back but we thought we should trim them some. Most are starting new sprouts at the bottom of the trunk but the tops and limbs are still bare and yellow looking. The limbs seem flexible but we thought we might need to cut them off so the sprouts can grow better. What do you think We have 2 red navel, 2 honeybell, 1 pink grapefruit and 1 meyers lemon. The grapefruit and lemon are doing much better than the orange trees but the lemon tree also has yellow limbs. Should we trim off the yellow limbs? Should we trim the tree down to the new sprouts? We fertilized at the time that the nursery told us we should and that seemed to help. I would really appreciate any advice we can get.

[hendi_alex]

I'm not familiar with citrus, but do have a few tender plants, like fig, in the yard and they get damaged during especially cold years. I start at an outer branch and make a cut to see if the wood is still alive. If not, then I continue to cut until a point is reached where good wood is evident. It is pretty easy to see where the live wood starts. The parts with live tissue will sprout back out. I can't see where leaving the dead wood on for a period of time will hurt the tree. It doesn't really bother my fig bushes if not removed, but I prefer to trim off any of the bad wood so as to avoid any kind of rot that might originate from the damaged parts.

[The Helpful Gardener]

New sprouts at the bottom of the trunk may wellbe root stock and not the plant you were growing so do NOT start lopping branches just yet; scratch the bark on the questionable branches and look for green in the layer just below the bark. If it is there, do not give up hope; if not you may have to start over...

Next time this kind of weather threatens, do what the growers do and water your trees until a layer of ice covers them. Ice never gets colder than 32 degrees and offers a shield from yet colder temps. It can be the difference between life and death...

HG

[Gary350]

I lived in Arizona for 6 years, my parents still live there. My parents have a grapefruit tree in the front yard and a lemon tree in the back yard. My Aunt has several orange trees in her yard. In the winter it gets below freezing and it never hurts the trees or fruit in the yard. The orchards run large fans to keep the air moving when the temperature gets below freezing but we never do anything to the trees in the yard. It is common for the temperature to get down to 28 deg F and the fruit trees do fine. As long as you don't pick the fruit it will stay good on the tree. The fruit gets ripe late November early December. I have left fruit on the tree and picked it as I need it, and in August fruit on the tree is just as good as it was in December. If you pick all the fruit on the tree you better eat is soon because it will all be bad in a few months, but if you leave it on the tree it stays good. Some of the fruit falls off the tree so if you want orange juice for breakfast use the fruit on the ground before you pick fruit from the tree.

Arizona State University ASU uses fruit trees as shade trees because they grow good or better than most other trees. Campus has several 1000 fruit trees, every December when the students leave for Christmas break university maintenance workers pick all the fruit and let it fall to the ground. Every tree on campus has a pile of fruit under the tree. They leave the fruit under the tree for anyone that wants to pick it up and take it home. 2 days before the students return the maintenance workers pick up all the fruit and dump it at the land fill. If anyone on this forum that lives in AZ go to ASU next year and pick up all the fruit you can haul. It is OK to drive on the sidewalks right up to the trees, stay off the grass and no one will say anything to you. I live in TN now a few years ago while visiting AZ I got a pickup truck load of fruit took it home to TN. Fruit was fine for a few months then it started going bad. I gave it away as fast as I could and we made juice out of a lot of the oranges before it all went bad. One year I flew to AZ to visit family before I returned I bought 4 suitcases $1 each at the thrift shop filled them with free ASU oranges flew back home with 150 lbs of oranges.

I hear on the TV News from time to time about Florida having trouble, cold weather is killing the fruit trees. It must get colder in Florida, farmers in Arizona don't seem to have that problem.

[The Helpful Gardener]

It's a dry heat, as I am familiar with Dad (Tucson) telling me...

Could be the humidity differences play a part; ask anyone from the Northeast and they'll tell you a rainy forty degrees will cut through you worse than a dry thirty dgrees will...plus incresed soil moisture likely translates to higher cell turgidity, which would lead to more bursting of cell membranes in freezing temps.

I love the desert and it's plants, even got Dad to put some natives in his yard (with his citrus and bougainvillea). Nice country but I would miss seasons, even, dare I say it, winter...

HG