Soil's fine - looks perfect to me. You're almost certainly dealing with the result of a heavy hand on the watering can. If your plants are established, shove a wick up into the bottom of the container & let it dangle a couple of inches below after you water. Wait for water to stop dripping off before you return the pot to it's spot.

Leaf loss is USUALLY a drought response due to over-fertilizing, under-watering or over-watering. All three inhibit the plants ability to take up water. The plant 'thinks' its dying of thirst, so it throws its leaves on the ground to slow transpirational water loss.

You CAN rule out over-fertilizing .... right?

Al

Thanks for the reply, AL. I was getting fairly frustrated after I found out from my sister that I'll be receiving tree sometime this week for my birthday & wasn't looking forward to killing it.

Is it normal for the mix to still be wet a week after watering it? After a week without watering I'd start getting worried and water again.

I can rule out over-fertilizing for the lime. I hadn't fertilized the lime at the time of the wilting. It's been fertilized since (Dynamite select, 15-5-9 slow release + micro) and is doing fine. The calamondin has been doing poorly since winter, losing a lot of leaves steadily, due to a huge crop of fruit and what I thought was poor soil (standard potting mix) and overwatering. It's why I decided to switch to the gritty mix. I fertilized it with the dynamite this spring after switching to the grit mix and then was giving it diluted Miracid every 2 weeks. The oroblanco was fertilized the same (One application of Dynamite + diluted Miracid every 2 weeks) until last week, when it shed a lot of leaves the day after a Miracid application.

"Is it normal for the mix to still be wet a week after watering it? After a week without watering I'd start getting worried and water again."

I'm not waffling when I say, "It depends." If you have an unestablished plant whose roots haven't colonized the entire container, then yes, it's pretty normal for the soil to be wet for a week - especially if you're using a container made from a material that isn't gas-permeable, or if you have a considerable volume of soil for the size of the plant. Keep in the back of your mind that if the soil surrounding the roots of a fresh planting is still at least barely damp - there is no need to water. If the soil of an established planting feels moist at the drain hole - no need to water. I think you're simply not used to the soil and are a little over-concerned about the soils water-holding capabilities.

FWIW - the shedding of leaves the day after the Miracid application was coincidental. It takes some time for an abscission layer to form and leaves to be shed - much longer than overnight, or even a few days.

Al

I have a few questions if I may...

What kind of pots are your plants planted in?

How big are the pots and how big are you plants?

Did you wash out all tghe old soil which would of held moisture before you planted into the gritty mix?

As for the dehydrated ones, did you make sure to fill the griity mix around ALL the roots with a pencil or stick, making sure to tuck the mix between all the roots?

Is there anyway you can take a picture of the plants?

What do you mean after you siften out the larger bark chunks? Is that after you have made the mix? Or did you just sift out the bark chunks seperatly, then add them into your mix?

Are you growing them in full sun, or shade?

Do you water in sips, or give a thorough watering each time until the water comes out from the bottom?

Do you use bottom saucers that collect water?

Have you even considered insects, since it seems like your calamondin was dooing poorly before you even switch to the gritty mix? Plant are much more suseptable to pests when weak..

Something tells me it might not be the mix at all, unless it has less bark than it is suppose to, but maybe your cultural habits are playing a bigger role than you might think as mine did when I started....

Were any other of your plants doing poorly before the switch over?

Something tells me the plants are not taking up water for some reason which leaves your bigger pots wet longer.

Also, in my experience, the smaller pots always dry out faster in the gritty mix if made correctly, especially in clay pots.
And in the bigger pots, the soil stays moist longer than one thinks when the roots ahve not filled the container just yet. Or if you have over potted..

Hi Mike, thanks for inquiring. I'll try to answer as best I can but I spent all day outside under the hot sun yesterday and have a flu to boot, so not all there.

All of the plants I have in gritty mix are in either 12" (the larger citrus) or in 6 inch terracotta pots. Most of my problems are with the trees in the larger pots. I have a desert rose, dwarf pomegranate and two small calamondin seedlings doing wonderfully in the small 6 inch pots.

Yes, the roots were completely cleaned of any previous soil when I transplanted them.

I did make sure the roots were all filled in. The taproot of the oroblanco would have definitely blocked a lot of gritty mix had I not made sure to fill in the hollow spaces around it with my finger/skewer.

I was pretty unclear with why I posted the pics. After 3 months of using the gritty mix, I noticed huge bark deposits on the top layer of my mix but didn't think much of it... that is, until 2 days ago. Sometime in the night, my dog got up in the window and pulled my small meyer lemon cutting out of its pot. By the time I did my rounds the next morning, the meyer was a goner. After dumping the gritty mix out of the pot (I was gonna use it for something else.. can't remember what) I took notice of the bark again. The top layer of the mix was mostly bark and the bottom 2/3rds was mostly granite/turface. It seems every time I'd water, the granite/turface was being pushed down around the much larger bark and eventually leading to the top of my mix being mostly bark while the bottom was mostly granite/turface, with little bark. The first pic is the mix I'm using with my plants and the second pic was a new batch I made with a much smaller bark component. I guess I was wondering if the new mix would work better with the smaller bark mix or if it was too small or if what I described was even a problem.

Right now all my plants are in a large SW picture window. They get filtered sun for most of the day, then strong direct sun for about 5 or 6 hours. If it wasn't for the thunderstorms the last couple of days, all of my big trees would be outside.

I water most of my stuff until I see the water pouring out of the drain holes. I have them all in saucers, so I'm not afraid to water until it pours out. The only thing I don't water like that are the two calamondin seedlings. They get watered in small sips.

The calamondin had a small mealy bug infestation when I bought it 2 years ago. I manually removed (squished) them and that was the end of it. Other than having to chase the occasional spider off my plant, I haven't noticed any problems.

The only plant I had before the switch over was the calamondin. The oroblanco and all the others went straight out of their nursery soil and into the gritty mix.

Al,

How far up into the pot should a wick be inserted? Does it need to be only in one of the drain holes, if there are more than one?

Thanks,

noss

Just far enough so it stays put. There's no physical advantage to having it go any further up than the bottom of the pot. I use wicks in all my bonsai pots until the roots have colonized the entire soil mass and I always make a loop that rests directly on the bottom of the container.

Only one is needed - no advantage in having more than 1.

Al

Al~
Or anyone else who knows, please jump in..:)

I'm not sure I totally understand using a wick.

If the roots haven't filled the container, and the water is at the bottom of the container, then why a wick?

JoJo

If soils are overly wet and hold perched water, the lack of aeration can slow roots down or harm them. When you use a wick, it's like adding 2-3" of depth to the pot.

Imagine a funnel. If a soil supports 3" of perched water and you put it in a cylindrical container with a 6" diameter and 6" deep, the soil will have 85 cubic inches of saturated soil. If you were to put that same soil in a funnel with the pointed end down, the container would have only a few cubic inches of saturated soil. To visualize this, think of a 6" cylinder and draw a line across it 6" up from the bottom and picture in your mind how much soil is below the line. Then, think of the funnel, with a line drawn 3" up from the pointy bottom, and imagine how much soil is below THAT line. Not much at all - a small fraction of what was in the cylinder ..... right? Instead of 85 cubic inches of saturated soil, we probably now have less than 8 cubic inches.

The wick does the same thing as a funnel. Water will move downward onto/into the wick, 'looking' for the bottom of the container. If the wick has about the same capillarity as the soil, and it is 3" long, it will pull all the perched water out of the heavy soil. IOW - we transfer the PWT to the WICK, which is outside the container - a much healthier state of affairs for those using heavy soils.

Does everyone understand this principle?

Al