hi everyone!

we've bought an orange tree roughly 9 months ago. We've been fertilizing it with kitchen scrap, coffee grounds and some manure.

roughly 3 months ago, it started blossoming like crazy and about a few weeks later, we saw several mini-green orange buds.

Here we are in May, and for some odd reason, most of the mini-green orange buds have fallen off. The tree looks healthy and I don't see any signs of stress.

We think the following may have taken place, but I'm not sure:

-the mini-green buds were eaten by slugs. Since we mulched and compost quite a bit. There's been a slug infestation. I have seen slugs climb up the 3-4 feet tree on to the branches to eat the flowers. Most of that is seen in the middle of the night.

-maybe the flowers were not fully "pregnant". I have spread corry's snail/slug death around the base of the tree. Maybe that killed the ants and prevented the pollens from impregnating the flowers. However, we did see several mini green oranges forming.

-competing roots from neighboring large trees (roughly 8-10 feet away) were eating away the nutrition of our tree.

Any advice is greatly appreciated. I'm not sure if there's something I'm not doing or something I'm doing right. We also have another orange tree on the other side of the house. It blossomed at around the same time, and that tree has been keeping its mini green buds so far.

Thanks!!