fruit drop – Xtremehorticulture

Chemical to Cause Fruit Drop in Ornamental Plum

Leave a Comment / flowering plum, fruit drop / xtremehorticulture

Q. I have an ornamental flowering plum that produces fruit. I want to spray it to stop the fruit production and the messiness it brings. Last year I had a commercial applicator apply it, but I think I want to save some money and do it myself this year. This is ornamental (flowering) plum fruit. The fruit is harvested by many to make a very tart (lots of sugar) jam or jelly. Commercially it is available as a fruit tree called ‘Sprite’ and ‘Delight’. A. Mark your calendar because yours will flower within the same week, plus or minus, every year. You’ll have to spray the tree with a chemical every year to get the fruit to drop when it’s still small and prevent the messiness later. To get it to work, spray the entire canopy of the tree when as many of the flowers are open as possible. Applying Olive Stop You will find it under several different similar trade names like, “Olive Stop”, “Fruit Eliminator”, “Fruit Be Gone”, or some similar name. What is important is the active ingredient listed on the front label in small letters. The most common active ingredient is Florel, but you might also find it listed as NAA, Fruitone, etc. How to Use it This concentrated spray is diluted with water and first sprayed when the flowers on the tree are fully open 20 to 30%. For best results it is sprayed again at 80% of full bloom a couple weeks later. Commercial applicators spray the tree a single time when it’s close to full bloom. It’s a good idea to include a wetting agent or surfactant before spraying to improve the sprays coverage and penetration. It’s important that the flowers are open and sprayed to the point where the inside is wet, and the flower starts dripping when you’re finished. The canopy of the tree is dripping with the spray when you’re done. This is called “to the point of runoff”. Spraying the open flowers above their reach is the usual problem for most homeowners because they don’t have a good way of spraying all the flowers. Ornamental Flowering Plum The ornamental flowering plum is an actual fruit tree. Nothing wrong with the fruit. It’s naturally “puckery”. Many people make jam and jelly with it when the fruit is not sprayed. I would not recommend making jam or jelly with it if it’s been sprayed. Add as much sugar to it as your taste permits.

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Small Yellow Immature Plums Dropping Sign of No Pollination

Q. I have two Santa Rosa plum trees planted in my backyard. The one in the lawn area has about 25% small yellow plums that fall off when I flick them or shake the branches. One is planted in a lawn area and the other in a rock landscape with a mulched area approximately 6ft. in diameter. Both are doing well with numerous large plums growing. The one in the lawn area has about 25% small yellow plums that fall off when I flick them or shake the branches. The remainder of the larger plums look great. Is this tree getting too much water or is this a natural thinning process going on? A. The yellowing fruit is a sign of a lack of pollination and they fall off naturally. Usually called “June drop” in some texts. I have some good pictures I can include later of plum with poor pollination. Check back after May 1st.

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Potted Meyer Lemon Flower Drop

1 Comment / container trees, desert, fertilizer, flower drop, freeze damage, fruit drop, irrigation, Las Vegas, Meyer lemon, Mohave Desert, Mojave Desert, nevada / xtremehorticulture

Q. You helped me before with my Meyer Lemon, so I hope you have an answer for this one. My tree is in a huge pot. It is about 4 years old. Last Spring, it had massive flowers (yum) and a lot of little green buds followed. Then every single one of those buds turned black and dropped off. Not one remained. I want to figure out why and change what I am doing so this never happens again. The plant is fertilized with granular fertilizer 2x a year — early spring and late summer. It gets moisture and hasn’t dried out. However the leaves could look more beautifully green. Sometimes, some of them curl and are not quite bright green. I do not know if the two issues are related, but I sure hope you have a suggestion. A. Sounds like you had post bloom fruit drop. Fruit drop can also occur during summer months and just before harvest. The usual reasons for post bloom fruit drop is usually some sort of stress. Four years is getting up there for being in the same pot without repotting. You might consider repotting and adding some new soil to the mix. Meyer lemon flowers I know you said it had adequate water but if it went through just a few hours of drought during or just after pollination, fruit drop may occur. If we have some freezing weather during or just after flowering, that can cause the fruit to abort too.We had some on January 6 and 8 in parts of the valley. When watering, make sure about 20% of the water that you apply runs out the bottom of the container each time you water. This is important for flushing salts from the soil. Another possibility in containers is overheating them. If in direct sunlight and the outside of the container gets too hot and transmits this heat to the soil, this can cause stress and cause fruit drop. Proper fertilization is important. Over fertilizing fruit trees, excess nitrogen, can cause fruit drop. And finally less commonly some insects such as scale or mealybug infestations can cause fruit drop as well. What to do? Make sure your container, the soil volume, is big enough to handle wide swings in temperature and water. Monitor both closely. You might find a houseplant moisture meter to be helpful. Keep the outside of a plant container out of the hot sun. Double potting a container is helpful to keep the soil temperature down. Watch for freezing temperatures at bloom time and cover the plant. Water the soil just before the heat of the day. Wet soil heats up more slowly than dry soil. If we have any frost during bloom it will affect fruit production.

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Orange Tree Dropping Fruit

Leave a Comment / citrus, fruit drop, navel orange / xtremehorticulture

Q. My orange has lots of blossoms, they begin to set the fruit, but when the fruit becomes the size of a pencil eraser, the fruit drops off the tree. What is going on? I watered it, and applied fertilzer. A. I have two questions that might shed more light: 1. Is this tree planted less than three years ago? and 2. Is it a Navel type orange? Sometimes it takes a few years for the plant to come into enough maturity to set and hold the fruits. . . . And dropping fruits is a common complaint with Navel Oranges. . . They set fruits and when the heat hits or the first dry wind and they slough off most, if not all their fruits. . . With time more and more will fruits will make it to maturity. . .. Most people are disappointed with the quantity of Navels but not the quality. Terry Mikel

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Pepper Tree Losing Its Leaves and Apricot Dropping Its Fruits

Leave a Comment / California pepper tree, fruit drop, leaf drop / xtremehorticulture

This is normal fruit drop in apricot. The fruit was mature and ready to be picked and a good wind came along and blew them off of the tree during the night. Q. Our Pepper tree is losing it’s leaves and they are dropping like crazy. Can you tell me what I can do or is this normal this time of year? Also the fruit is dropping off apricot tree. A. Leaf and fruit drop can be from very similar causes, usually some form of stress. This stress can come from temperature extremes, irrigation and soil moisture extremes or wildly fluctuating soil moistures. Unlike leaves, for fruit to stay on the plant or tree the flower needs to be pollinated and the environment should be fruit-friendly. Even though flowers are modified forms of leaves for fruit to develop then it must include the transfer of pollen from male parts of a flower to female parts of the flower. During this transfer it is best done by insects like bees in those trees and plants requiring pollination by insects (most fruit trees and vegetables). During pollination (which can cover a period of a couple of weeks in cool weather because the flowers don’t all open at once) it is best if the weather is friendly to pollinators (good temperatures, good humidity and normal winds) as well as pollination. So when the flowers are open you hope for warm weather free from rain and storms. When these conditions vary further and further from ideal then the amount of fruit set may be diminished. Early almond drop in May due to lack of pollination. The yellow almonds have not been pollinated so no nut has formed and the whole nut drops from the tree two months before harvest. Temperatures after fruit set can play a big factor as well. If temperatures drop really low after fruit set then this can cause fruit to drop early. Some fruit can start to develop from the flower even though it is not pollinated but this fruit will drop from the tree, usually turning yellow first before dropping. The bees may have missed this flower but the flower starts forming the fruit anyway. Without pollination many fruits cannot develop more than just its juvenile stage and then drop. The fruit tree thins itself in this manner but not enough for our pleasure. This can be normal but should not be all of the fruit. This is called “June drop” which happens in our climate earlier, sometime in late April or early May usually. Plum fruits, if they do not get pollinated, will grow for awhile but eventually yellow and drop from the tree early while pollinated fruit (green here) will continue on to maturity. In the case of your apricot see if it is natural thinning; small fruit yellow and drop. There should still be some fruit remaining. By the way some apricots do need pollinator trees. I do not know what variety you have but Tomcot, Perfection and Rival are three that might need a pollinator. If it set in previous years then it is a problem that occurred this year such as late freeze, poor conditions for pollination when the flowers were open, irregular watering and some others. Hopefully it is just June drop and you still have plenty of fruit left. With your California pepper it is most likely irregular or having a streak of hot weather that the plants were not prepared for. Make sure if you get hit with hot weather out of the norm to run them through an irrigation cycle ahead of schedule.

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