Thanks for your reply.

I don't know where the drip line is. the tree has a radius of about 10
ft, and the grass is about 2 ft from the trunk.

What harm does the grass do? The grass probably isn't much of a factor
because the tree is in the corner the grass covers less and less than 25% of
the circle beneath it.

I think it is getting plenty of water. The lemons also get almost the
size of small grapefruits sometimes. For some reason, it has not been
developing fruit high in the tree -- only in the lower half. Is that a sign
of insufficient water?

What do you think about what the nurseryman said about a mineral
deficiency?

Do you think I might be on the right track, but just too impatient? It
seems to me that it might take a long time for the minerals to get down to
the roots.


"Travis" wrote in message
news:0KtXd.30301$uc.929@trnddc09...
G Burton wrote:
The lemons on my tree have very thick skins and the fruit is
extremely sour. I live in zone 14. The tree had been neglected
for at least 5 years and was badly infested with scale, but that is
under control now. I thought that it might be a bad variety of
lemon, but my local nurseryman looked at one of my lemons and told
me that was not the case. He also told me that thick skins and
sour fruit go together and are both symptoms of a tree that is
starved of minerals. He then sold me and iron, sulfur, manganese,
zinc mixture called F.S.T. I am also feeding it Citrus food.

Well I have been tossing down a handful F.S.T. and citrus food
once every 6 weeks for about a year now, but the lemons are still
horribly sour and the skins are still thick. Much of the roots are
under our lawn, so I have been spreading F.S.T. and citrus food on
my lawn as well, but it doesn't seem to hurt it. Our soil is heavy
clay. It may just be that it takes a very long time for the F.S.T.
and citrus food to work its way down, but I was hoping for results
by now.

Opinions and suggestions please.

Remove the grass from the root zone in other words, from the trunk to the
drip line. Is the tree getting adequate water?

--

Travis in Shoreline (just North of Seattle) Washington
USDA Zone 8b
Sunset Zone 5