June Drop Is Here We are well into our first week of June and summer is just about here. Sure it seems like summer with the high heat we have had, but nights still cool down quickly to a pleasant temp once the sun goes down and air is very dry. Summer is more charterized with higher humidity with the monsoonal flow, and nights that dont normally cool off. One thing you will notice about June and fruit trees is a phenomena called June Drop. In the valley it is usually associated with citrus as they are the predominant fruit tree, but also happens with many other fruit trees as well. Many inexperienced gardeners associate the premature fruit drop with the high temperatures and immediately start to water more thinking something must be wrong. Actually nothing is usually wrong. Fruit trees always set much more fruit than they can support, and once the tree has evaluated the available care it is getting, ie. feedings, water schedule and quantity, etc. it will decide how much fruit to keep and will drop the rest. A few other reasons trees drop fruit is lack of pollination (the bees dont get to every flower), environmental stress such as steady high winds, a disruption in water (suddenly not getting water on schedule or suddenly getting too much water, either can be caused by faulty irrigation system), or exposure changes such as pruning too vigorously or removing branches or a whole tree that may have been shading the fruit tree. Same happens when suddenly the tree has too much shade such as when it had been growing in sun and you plant another much bigger tree or build something that now shades too much. Thing to know is to give your trees consistent care, and if there is no other explainable reason for fruit drop it isnt anything to worry about, just nature doing what it knows best.
Posted on: Fri, 06 Jun 2014 17:27:23 +0000
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