Lemon Tree

Hi

I bought a Lemon Tree from a graden centre a couple of weeks ago, it was doing really well but now it has started to loose all it's leaves, any ideas why it would be doing this and what i could do to stop it?

 

I had the same problem with mine, a Meyer's Lemon tree. A lady at Langthorne's growery suggested misting the leaves regularly, avoid draughts in cold weather, and keep well watered. Mine still sheds leaves, but the new growth is healthy (and still on the plant!). Some citrus feed seems to help too.

Strangely enough, she also suggested that the tree likes a gentle breeze when the weather is warm, like it is today..... Hmmm. Doesn't seem to tie in with "avoid draughts" but there you go... ;-)

cheers,
Dave

 

Thanks Dave

I have got a citrus drip feeder in there and I've put new citrus compost on top, I'll see what happens with it, The flower buds aren't dropping just seems to be the leaves. I have noticed some green flys on it do you think this could be the problem? Can you get some sort of spray to get rid of them?

 

Hi Laurar.

Greenfly.....oops... you too? Fingers crossed, mine have gone. I literally picked or washed them off or squashed them, and put the plant out in the greenhouse yesterday. I *think* there's none left.......
I was advised not to go for any aphid treatment that's systemic and goes into the plant if it's a plant for eating.......
Apparently soapy water on the leaves works (will try this soon) and I had some success with sprays in the past. Last year, every time I found a ladybird, I'd pick it up and introduce it to some of the aphids on my pepper plants ( another aphid fave meal ;-) ). it did seem to help. This year I'm trying growing plants to attract aphid predators alongside my Veg. Hope it works... :-)

cheers,
Dave

 

Hello laurar and welcome to GC.

I am perhaps not the best person to answer here but I too have a Meyer lemon planted in a pot .... which seems rather silly as I live in the middle of orchards. However,I have not had such a problem with mine and it has to endure intense heat and near-on frost weather.

Here are a couple of links which may be of interest to you ...

http://4presents.co.uk/Citrus.aspx

http://www.sunkist.com/products/how_citrus_trees.asp

There are only a few members growing lemons in the UK and perhaps one of them will come along here and answer your questions.

My sister, Kedi-Gato from Germany here on GC, has had a Meyer lemon for many years growing in her Wintergarten (conservatory) in North Germany and she has many lemons so I will ask her if she can enlighten you with your problems.

In the meantime, enjoy GC.

 

First off, we have never had a problem with greenfly, but we have had scale insects sometimes. We just scratch them off.

Don't worry about leaves dropping off, ours does the same but it has never affected the plant, and they do grow back.

Hubby feeds ours a couple of times during the growing season with these little blue pellets (sorry! I don't know what they are called!). He swears by them and all of our plants get dosed. He just sprinkles a few around the plant and then lightly works them in.

Another good thing for lemon (citrus) trees is to add rotted oak leaves and work them into the soil lightly too.

Apart from that, water regularly in the summer and very sparingly in the winter.

As Sis said, we bring ours into our Wintergarten before the first frost and trim it back at this time. After the last frost in May, it gets taken back outside and given another trim if needed.

Don't worry about the baby fruits falling off, the tree gets rid of what it can't cope with. Ours still does it, throws off no end but still produces lots of fruit. Sometimes we have too many for ourselves, so we give them to our next-door neighbour.

Good luck with yours, both laurar and Synthhead and welcome to GC.

 

When we bought a lemon tree the garden centre also sold us 2 expensive pots of citric food, one for the winter and one for the summer. I used them religiously for the first 2 years but haven't done it this year and it has been no different

The leaves regularly go pale and then drop off but new ones replace them.
We get luscious lemons off it.

 

Talking of Lemon trees. I have a tree I have grown from a pip it is about 4 years old now. I am not optimistic that it will fruit or even flower for that matter. Anyone any idea whether growing from a pip would produce a plant that will fruit?

 

I think I heard that they don't grow true and don't fruit either, moyra, when grown from a pip. But since there is always an exception to every rule, I hope that yours is the exception.

We've never bought any of that expensive citrus feed, as said, Hubby just used this blue pellet stuff.

 

Thanks Kedi, as I said I was not optimistic that it would fruit or flower, but i can alsways live in hope!