as for the chlorosis, thats a deficiency of iron
you can use an iron foliar spray and a micromized iron in the soil to green up the leaves
if you can find the powder, i use high iron nails, no stainless or galvanized, and push a few into the soil around the plant
as the nails rust they supply small amounts of iron to keep the leaves green
you can still do the foliar spray before placing the nails in the soil

Orchid Guy,

Love the idea of reusing old rusty nails. Talk about "green"! This house was built in 1922; I'm sure I can find a few old nails around.

Thanks,

Franz

Franz, if your pictures are on your computer, upload them to www.imageshack.us or www.photobucket.com. From there, I believe you can 'host it' [instructions are on these sites] and post the resulting url here for pix to appear. It's quite easy once you learn how. I came here because I have two 'baby' dwarf lemon trees in my house which aren't growing very well and am looking for some help! Maybe I'll take a pix of them and post them here too!

Gang,

Thanks to Soteriagal for the upload instructions. Here (I hope) are photos of my Meyer lemon.

{{gwi:567446}}

{{gwi:567447}}

I'm planning to do some heavy water blasting and then some pyrethrum for the aphids. And I'm going to get out my Tanglefoot for the trunk. Years ago this helped, since without the ants, the aphids were less able to withstand my water blasts.

What else should I do?

Franz

Franz, when was the last time you sent in some soil tests for accurate readings? Also, I'd take some of those leaves in to your local extension office for examination and maybe even tissue analysis.

Though I suggest that you wait until you have the results of your soil tests, iron nails won't give you the results you wish. Iron nails and iron shavings break down into solids that aren't soluble or absorbable by plants. Your soil tests may even determine that your soils don't need iron at all, but a change in pH so that existing iron can be released into the soil solution and made available for uptake. Or, if the pH seems to be borderline, a good citrus fertilizer will have the necessary chelated iron and other minor elements required for good health.

If you have a very high population of ants in this location, you ought to use an ant bait to control their numbers, once and for all. Amdro is recommended for use around citrus, I believe. There are also some 'organic' ant baits that do a good job, too. Look for the active ingredient SPINOSAD on the label of those baits.

Do you have scale insects? You mention something white and powdery, and I don't think of aphids with that description. ;-)

You wrote:
"... old rusty nails."

Unfortunately that's a bit of well-loved folklore. As was said, it won't work because rust isn't soluble.

HI all,

Bummer about the nails; I liked that folklore. As for taking in soil samples, I've never done it. But tree has done fine for years, it's only now that it's having such trouble. I just went down and checked for scale, but didn't find any. On the other hand, neither did I find aphids. So rhizo_1 is onto something here. I assumed aphids, but now I find tiny flakey things too small to really see without my glasses (which I forgot). I'm attaching three photos that might help out: one of damage on the fruit, one of damage on a leaf, one of the powder. Perhaps it's mites?

Thanks,

Franz
{{gwi:567448}}
{{gwi:567449}}
{{gwi:567450}}