Citrus fruit – survival of the fittest

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Wednesday 03 June, 2015 by Uncle Spike

The weird weather continues…

It’s early June, and we have the potential for rain this week; practically unheard of. It might not happen though, but the hills are a rumblin’ I can tell you. Might sound strange, but I hope not actually… the grass and weeds are still growing, which means I am going to have to cut some 5000 square metres with the brushcutter this weekend (again!) before laying down the watering pipes, and no, not even started the tree painting yet! I guess I could, but any decent storm will wash 50% of it off, so what’s the point?

Still in a race to get chores knocked off before Ramadan starts, however fingers crossed to the possibility of a pair of helping hands flying in from Blighty next week – Uncle Baldrick returns!

Meanwhile, the trees are enjoying the cool weather, but they are hot weather trees, so the fruit growth is also suffering. Plenty of fruit there, but not enough is getting roasted by the sun and dropping off, so all the goodness is getting spread between a hundred fruit, instead of twenty. 

Take this young and thin clementine tree branch that is maybe 18 months old; it has far too many fruit as if they all went to maturity, the tree would collapse, but more likely the fruit would just be very small, and thereby unsellable.

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A few are dropping, and hopefully the sun will rise well over the 30c (86F) mark soon – time, and weather, will tell; the age old story of farming success or disaster.

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