Q. Frank,
this is a variegated leaf pink lemonade lemon tree bought last December. The
fruit you see were present when bought. You will notice there are several
dropped leaves on the planting soil and I an eager to know what is causing them
to drop. The tree is watered irregularly but last week I hyper-saturated
the soil when I neglected to move the hose in a timely fashion.
Assuming
the cause of the dropping may be insect related, the tree was sprayed two times
in four days with neem oil. Now the question is what is causing the leaves to
drop? Was it my one-time over-watering? A combination of the over-watering
and the neem oil? Would the over-watering cause the roots to become waterlogged?
Will the leaves eventually start to grow back?
I found the following bag of ‘garden soil’
with only a small quantity of content left in the bottom of the bag. This
leads me to the assumption this is what I probably used potting the lemon tree.
While I might have mixed it with some other remnant gardening product found
around the garage, soil or mix, this product probably represents the vast
majority of the what I used. Visually this garden soil looks similar to what is
in the pot around the lemon tree. Hopefully this product identification
addresses your question, resolves the issue and provides a reasonable platform
for further discussions and a solution/conclusion to the continuing episode of
“The Falling Leaves".
A. One of the most
important components of potting soil is not the organic material, but the
inorganic material that provides for drainage. Drainage is the word used to
describe the soils ability to allow water to move through it. Media that is
heavy in organic material prevents water from moving through it because there
are few if any spaces for the water to travel, and a plethora of compounds and
surfaces that actually cling to water (they are called hydrophilic compounds).
This allows for a root-space that eventually becomes devoid of oxygen, a
primary factor in root growth.
The substance in the
bag that you have sent me a picture of is organic compost replete with lawn
trimmings and table scraps. This product is fine to add to a garden where it is
to be dug in and diluted with the sand, clay and silt that is already present
in the garden soil, it is however, sheer poison if used alone in a pot. Not
only does the water added to the pot saturate the root space and displace life
giving oxygen, but the table scrap compost starts to ferment without oxygen.
This anaerobic fermentation of the compost produces toxic compounds and gasses
that hasten the death of the already oxygen starved roots. Having a hole in pot
filled with this vile mix does little to improve the conditions as a physical
force called the “capillary force” that is powered by waters’ attraction to
small, cylindrical linear spaces keeps the water the soil like the two
components of Velcro keep each other well attached.
So, as I suggested,
you need to either replant the citrus in a pot with
½ cactus mix and ½ “potting soil “ (make sure the bag specifies the word
‘potting’) or replant a new one in the same. I would start with a new plant, as
the weakened condition of the tree has made it labile to disease and has
increased the possibility that if you transplant it, your will also transplant
a large quantity of disease producing fungal spores (like Phytophthora, see video
of spores) as well.
