planted outside and should they be covered when the temperature goes
below freezing?
A. First of all, citrus does not require a lot of pruning
unlike some other fruit trees. You would focus on removing crossed branches,
broken branches or branches too close together. Generally speaking, prune
citrus right after you harvest the fruit. Myers lemon may begin flowering in
January or February and that becomes a bit late because the fruit will not
finish until December of the same year, 10 months later.
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| Flowers of Myers lemon |
This is why it is important to remove
the fruit on Myers lemon by the end of December or it may interfere with
flowering the following January or February. Growing citrus in our climate is always
risky because of winter freezing temperatures. With most cold sensitive plants
we would want to wait until after the last possible freezing event. This would
put it into perhaps mid-February.
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| Immature fruit of Myers lemon in container |
Waiting this long, even though it’s the right
thing to do with winter tender plants, is a problem with Myers lemon because it
begins to flower so early. So we have to take our chances and prune right after
harvesting in early January before flowering begins.
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| This table taken from University of California Riverside document below |
F. The amount of damage depends on the temperature but also on the length of
time the temperature remains. So 20° F just before sunrise is a lot less
damaging than reaching 20° F at 3 AM and staying there until sunrise.
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| Immature fruit of Myers lemon in container |
number one reason we have fruit failure in Myers lemon in our Las Vegas climate is because of late
freezing weather. Even though Myers lemon can withstand temperatures close to
20° F, the flowers or young fruit cannot. They begin to bloom in January or
February and may have flowers or very small fruit on the tree and a light
freeze comes by and ruins the crop. Then I get emails about why my lemon tree
didn’t produce any fruit this past year or last two years.
important to put citrus in warm microclimates in Las Vegas yards and out of the wind
in our winter cold climate. You will need to cover Myers lemon whenever
temperatures get close to freezing, 32° F, if they have flowers or small fruit.
If they do not have flowers or small fruit than they can withstand colder
temperatures.
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| We had some nice fall color like this during November and December In Las Vegas due to the gradual drop and fall/winter temperatures |