"Loosecanon" wrote in message
...

"Dave -Turner" wrote in message
...
gday, ive got a small Mandarin tree in a pot (a seedless Silverhill
clone/graft), its only maybe a year old and ive just noticed it has
started to get quite a few small round flower balls which will open up
soon, i guess it knows spring is here. Are mandarin trees self
pollenating? and in that case can I collect their pollen and brush it on
the stigmas to manually pollenate the flowers to get more fruit?




Hi Dave,

Mandarins are self pollinating but no matter how many flowers you
pollinate the tree can only support so much. There will be a natural
increase in fruit as the tree gets bigger. So basically you would be
wasting your time pollinating flowers. Best to let mother nature do the
job. Such a young tree would only have a handfull of fruit I reckon but I
could be wrong.

I so love the Imperial Mandarin it is best tasting in the mix. Even if it
has seeds.

I have also found that low hanging branches bear more fruit so some
weights on the end of some branches may encourage more fruit.

This is the first year for mandarin tree (or is it the second?) and I got
over 2 dozen this year. I should have removed a lot of them when they were
tiny though, because the full grown fruit is only very small - but they
taste great.

Jen