The coolness and shortening day length are speeding the process of natural color break of citrus on the tree. Scarcity of rainfall in most of the Valley has resulted in low soil moisture supplies. While the shorter and cooler days are slowing growth, the fact remains that most orchards will have needed supplemental irrigation this fall. You might remember the good ole days when we tried to schedule the final irrigation around Thanksgiving well, welcome back to the future. As reported earlier, harvesting is ahead of last year and proceeding smoothly.
Quality is good, overall grapefruit size appears good.
Fall weed control is not common in Texas because of low skirts and the fruit that gets knocked off by herbicide booms. Fall is, however, one of the premier times to kill guinea grass, especially as cooler weather and shorter days induce greater downward translocation from the leaves. Fall fertilization is commonly practiced in some Texas orchards. About all I'll say about that is that if your production is down drastically from last year, it would be a good idea to boost the rate by 15 to 20 percent for next season. Conversely, if your production is significantly higher than last year, i.e., other than as a normal increase in production because the trees are still short of mature tree production, it might be wise to reduce next year's fertilizer rate by 15 to 20 percent.