I just made the biggest irrigation mistake of my life. I watered wrong, and now my entire year is ruined! In this video, I share this devastating watering mistake that can cause fruits dropping on fruit trees. Learn from my mistake and prevent fruit tree fruit drop during droughts and bad weather so it never happens to you.
• How to Irrigate with Sprinkler Hoses: https://youtu.be/TpdBB63VUxg?si=W762R2wXIZgEnlDW
• For permanent irrigation, see my Drip Irrigation Install Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1gY7BoYBGIHHHsx0JPcYgD4xXzA96usL&si=lWFXx70ry1z644R2
Drip irrigation system parts can be purchased through my Drip Depot Affiliate link**: https://aff.dripdepot.com/aff/idevaffiliate.php?id=372
• The I use the following products* to irrigate and grow fruit trees:
Sprinkler Hose (50FT, 2 Pack): https://amzlink.to/az0ubiHYphtM6
Sprinkler Hose (50FT): https://amzlink.to/az0cvzNmi6PNs
Sprinkler Hose (25FT): https://amzlink.to/az0eYO5SZFwqH
Lead-In Hose (2FT): https://amzlink.to/az09cCe6st4LX
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Japanese Anvil Pruners: https://amzlink.to/az0VjwxH5sfVN
Small Japanese Pruning Saw: https://amzlink.to/az0FjnUryS1Uu
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Insecticide + Fungicide Concentrate: https://amzlink.to/az0xGD4PHfM8K
Liquid Copper Fungicide: https://amzlink.to/az0qIRXgwYSaf
4 Gal Battery Backpack Sprayer: https://amzlink.to/az0yoJL5NNxkB
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Shade Cloth: https://amzlink.to/az01boLJy9JNI
Alaska Fish Fertilizer [5-1-1]: https://amzlink.to/az0FwrU8QjSg9
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Introduction
1:27 Cold Stress Triggered Record Bloom
3:22 My Fruit Trees Are Dropping Fruits
6:01 The Cause of Fruit Drop
7:20 Why Fruit Trees Drop Fruit in Droughts
8:58 The Importance of Fruit Tree Irrigation
10:12 How to Irrigate Fruit Trees the Easy Way
11:53 The Slow Garden Hose Watering Method
13:34 How to Stop Fruit Trees Dropping Fruit
15:15 Automated Irrigation Results
15:38 Why I Underestimated This Drought
18:56 Adventures With Dale
If you have any questions about how to stop fruit drop on fruit trees, growing a vegetable garden at home, how to grow fruit trees or the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share DIY and “how to” garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please leave a comment!
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ABOUT MY GARDEN
Location: Southeastern NC, Brunswick County (Wilmington area)
Zone 8B, 34.1°N Latitude
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44 Comments
Please LIKE and SHARE this video with family and friends at risk of fruit drop so they don't lose their harvests! TIMESTAMPS here:
0:00 Introduction
1:27 Cold Stress Triggered Record Bloom
3:22 My Fruit Trees Are Dropping Fruits
6:01 The Cause of Fruit Drop
7:20 Why Fruit Trees Drop Fruit in Droughts
8:58 The Importance of Fruit Tree Irrigation
10:12 How to Irrigate Fruit Trees the Easy Way
11:53 The Slow Garden Hose Watering Method
13:34 How to Stop Fruit Trees Dropping Fruit
15:15 Automated Irrigation Results
15:38 Why I Underestimated This Drought
18:56 Adventures With Dale
GENUINELY, I am heartbroken for the loss of your fruit. Nobody understands better than a fellow gardener. The rest of us SO APPRECIATE your humility and your candor by informing us of your loss. We're all in this together! Your loss is my loss. My gain is your gain. Someday, I hope to repay your kindness by passing along some of my own hard-won wisdom……the kind of wisdom that can only be learned by experiencing a loss. I hope that you're comforted by the fact that there are thousands of us out here that are rooting for you and want you to succeed with ALL of your gardening efforts!
Evil in power curses the land 👀 not your fault brotha
Best gardening videos on YouTube. Just wish you have videos about eggplants.
Love the videos, just know it could always be worse. I'm down in zone 10 South Florida where drought is so bad they're telling people even on well water to stop watering/irrigation
I found this out last year, even if my citrus are on a dripline and having consistent 1xa week for 30 mins all year, that was not enough, here in zone 9b las vegas citrus fruits better if they get daily watering for 7 days once you see the blooms to hold them.
Thanks for explaining why my Meyer lemon looks dead. My Cara Cara still has leaves but no fruit. I got them in late August and decided to wait until the weather cooled a touch before putting them in ground. Shortly thereafter, I saw a weather prediction that we could have the coldest winter in decades. I made the decision to put them in my garage under grow lights. I checked the pH, light, temperature and water levels multiple times a week. They looked great until we had a couple of warm sunny days early in March. I put them outside during the day but brought them back in when night temps were supposed to be near freezing. We had a run of cold days (low 40s for highs) so I kept them in the garage. The started blooming and the lemon was absolutely covered in blooms. The orange not as much. Continued watering and taking out on warm sunny days. I was waiting and hoping that temps would become typical warm days/nights in April. About 2 weeks ago, I put them in ground because overnight the Meyer dropped more than 90% of its fruit blooms. I fertilized the hole with Osmocote (as Stan recommended), put a little coco coir on top of that and then planted the tree (for both) and watered deeply as the label said. The orange still looked good but the lemon started looking dry on the branches. I cut one and it showed no signs of life. I trimmed the dead looking branches and scratched near the base. It didn't look dead so I was optimistic that things would improve. A little over two weeks and it is looking like I will be Scranton bound before long to replace the lemon!!
This was very informative. I will try to remember when I finally get some blooms. Have you looked into soil moisture meters? They can't be used to a science, but I have a few in locations I consider high risk (e.g., small plant in big pot or big plant in small pot) to help inform me when things are going sideways. It gets kind of addicting to check on my plant's moisture meters.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. I live on the OuterBanks and we are experiencing the same drought conditions. I have been watering mine all through this dry spell and my blossoms still dropped. They had plenty yo water but still dropped. I don’t think it’s you.
Thank you for showing the level of water flow, explaining where to place the hose and why, how long to leave it running, and how often to repeat it. This level of detail is really helpful but hard to find. You are going to be a hero to a lot of fruit trees out there.
We did not get to cold this past winter here in Surprise, AZ and what happened was oranges that weren't as sweet and a few didn't fully ripe before my tree began to put out blossoms. After the blossoms I expected to see baby oranges. I have not seen a single orange. Not 1, and my 3 year old orange tree didn't even set out any blossoms. So, I've got nothing for this year 😔
A Myers lemon is one of the best smelling fruit trees in bloom
I’m in ATL, GA. This drought is brutal! Thankfully all my fruit trees are in very large containers, so I’ve kept them in a regular watering schedule. I hope you’ve saved what’s left in your trees!
Thanks for all the great information that you give us!
I have to question your watering issues. Isn't it just they are blossoming in the wrong season??
I have gone through the same thing here in GA with several fruit trees lime, lemon, tangerine, tangelo, orange, grapefruit , blood orange and others dying back to 1-3 foot of their main trunk with 8° for several days in December. They were moved in the house for recovery
. They had bloomed heavily and lost most of their fruit except 1 grapefruit and my lime having good lime fruits. With the exception on my lime all of the others are they are watered properly as they are all in self rooting 25gallon bags.
I believe they are just blossoming in the wrong season and will start again in their normal season of sept – November.
Put heavy duty (not Walmart – serious outdoor) tarps and stick a heat lamp inside on every citrus tree. It’s not too hot; can be left on for a week at least. Turn the lamps on when the temps drop below freezing. My dad had no loss of any leaves or branches…at all. With 20 degree weather. It blew my mind. That’s what I’m doing next year.
Frost got out blackberries and bush cherries. Correction. We got a freeze later than usual.
On the bright side your trees are healthy and beautiful
We are in northern nc on the Va border,same drought troubles and garden is taking longer to really take off even with irrigation. So sorry to hear about the fruit trees! Thank you for sharing! Hopefully you be able to hang on to what you have left 😬
THANKS FOR SHARING NOW I SEE WHY MY LIME TREES LOST ALL ITS LIMES
Damn dude, you're getting ripped. Hopefully naturally and healthily.
I had that problem last summer with my tomatoes in a drought.
Drought has been brutal. Lost all my pawpaw fruits the same.
You are my top go-to home gardener for a reason. I am so sorry for your lost harvest, and I wish you the very best with the rest of your garden ❤️
I had the same issue but did not realize I was not watering enough. My lemon tree did the same thing.
Hang in there. Climate change is real. I water deeply every week, after losing azaleas due to early freezes. Drought, ugh.
I feel your pain. The high excitement made the devastation so much worse. Especially where these things require so much time and only so much we can control or anticipate. Love from north Idaho.
For those who do not usually have super low temps… if your plants are hardy down to 32F, you can set sprinklers out to intentionally cause a thick layer of ice to cover all your plants. The ice will actually insulate your plants and prevent them from dropping below 32F into those more dangerous/deadly temps.
This happened to my peach tree this year, thousands of blooms but only a couple peaches. Last year we had hundreds of peaches
That sucks. It’s really bad here in Utah. Thanks for the reminder!
So long as you don't cry… I will watch 🙂
Just remember you didn't really lose anything.
You're just not gaining anything.
The trees are fine, they're going to survive. This is total destruction, it's just a small speed bump. It sucks, but next year will be back to normal.
I hate to say global warming, but.
Next time, thin out your blooms. If the tree THINKS it can't sustain all the fruit coming it will drop for survival purposes. If you thin out the blooms the tree will chill out and look to reproduction for survival again. If it senses a drought it knows pumping water into fruit is a no go… so it sheds it's supply and demand dilema.dilemma.
Also, plants bloom like crazy after a hard freeze… our desert had a rare snow one year and the wild flowers that spring were insane. I've noticed the trend in my own garden. We don't get much snow in Texas so when it does happen, spring is a flower bomb.
I feel your pain, lost one plum tree because of the cold and they very rarely hold their blooms. I have 3 plums on 1 tree. The first few warm days in February trick the plums into blooming then come the wind and the cold and blow away the blooms.
I am so terribly sorry for your fruit loss. I hate that it happened. But I do thank you for the video and the warning. I'm a notoriously bad waterer so I need to step up my game for sure.
I haven't watered the bare root trees I planted March 1st because we've had 6 inches of rain every other week in North Texas. We have sandy clay soil and with the hardwood mulch around my trees it just doesn't get a chance to dry out. That will change in July and August most likely…
I lost every single one of my seedlings back in March. Devastated. Last year I had bumper crops with big beef plus, carmello, celebrity plus, and dozens more hybrids you helped show me. Lost every single seed, over 100. Once they all germinated, I fertilized and burnt the crap out of them. Last year they were perfect. I'm now having to grow plants from Lowe's. So I get it.
I live near you in Lake Waccamaw area. I was showing my sons where my 15 foot plum tree was drying out the grass over the root runs. It also started to drop fruit.
I caught it very early though.
Sorry for your troubles.
We have had 12 inches of rain since April 1st in upstate Ny.
Your water bill must be massive, unless you have another arrangement that saves you water.
I feel yr pain but know that u saved another & it always comes back..yr turn next time
Thanks for being transparent about this! This definitely help others though.
Sorry about the harvest loss. Thank you for sharing. We are on a homesteading journey ourselves and learning from our mistakes too. Your videos are super helpful. Best wishes ❤
It’s too late for me I’ve lost all my fruit but I did notice maybe 3 new flowers so hopefully I can keep them