Thank you. Nice picture!

I'm in Western Garden book's zone 14, Northern California.

I don't want to strip out the grass in that corner of my yard. There is
not much grass in the drip line anyway. I will look for a place to get my
soil tested, but I know that the topsoil is not a good reflection of what
the roots are imbedded in. That is clay. I guess I would have to dig down
about 3 ft to get a representative sample.




"Snooze" wrote in message
om...
"G Burton" wrote in message
...
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.


The rule of thumb is that the roots branch out into the soil as far as the
branches grow from the trunk, so the drip line is the circle around the
tree as wide as the longest branch.

As for the suspected soil defency, anything done over the internet is just
a random guess. Consider getting your soil tested. Many university
extention campuses in america will test it for free, or for a small fee.
You didn't say where you are located.

Grass competes with the tree for water and nutrients, which is why
orchards often remove the weeds that grow around the drip line as seen in
this picture.

http://home.earthlink.net/~gathering...%20Orchard.jpg
If that url doesn't work, try this one:
http://xrl.us/fduh

-S