fruit trees
 

orange & tangelo (they have fruit on them now),when's the best time to prune
them & how much is too much to take off ? thanks,Denise

Denise Clere wrote:
orange & tangelo (they have fruit on them now),when's the best time to prune
them & how much is too much to take off ? thanks,Denise




Anytime the tree is dormant. Between January and mid April. Unless you
live in Australia.
Pruning orange trees should be confined to trimming extremely long
branches that become untidy or new branches that cross over others, they
do not require any special pruning to encourage flowers as these will be
produced naturally on new shoot tips and any wood old enough to bear
them. You should aim to keep branches fairly short so that they will
eventually become strong enough to carry the weight of half a dozen
fruit of 6 oz. You should also be aiming to keep the centre of the tree
quite open as this will allow plenty of light in to the tree.
Don't know much about Tangelo but I'd imagine it would be handled the same.

Here's a couple of helpful links. If you're on dialup it may take a bit
to load.


http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/m...ml#Description
http://agebb.missouri.edu/mac/librar...p?linknum=1914

Prune citrus as soon as they've lost all of their fruit and before the new
growth and blossoms come out. You can be quite radical in triming them back
to a manageable size.

"GFRfan" wrote in message
news:f%Oqd.110304$V41.77221@attbi_s52...
Denise Clere wrote:
orange & tangelo (they have fruit on them now),when's the best time to
prune
them & how much is too much to take off ? thanks,Denise




Anytime the tree is dormant. Between January and mid April. Unless you
live in Australia.
Pruning orange trees should be confined to trimming extremely long
branches that become untidy or new branches that cross over others, they
do not require any special pruning to encourage flowers as these will be
produced naturally on new shoot tips and any wood old enough to bear
them. You should aim to keep branches fairly short so that they will
eventually become strong enough to carry the weight of half a dozen
fruit of 6 oz. You should also be aiming to keep the centre of the tree
quite open as this will allow plenty of light in to the tree.
Don't know much about Tangelo but I'd imagine it would be handled the
same.

Here's a couple of helpful links. If you're on dialup it may take a bit
to load.


http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/m...ml#Description
http://agebb.missouri.edu/mac/librar...p?linknum=1914