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jchad214

Leaf Problems

11 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago

My little lime looks healthy except the young leaves start to distort as shown in the pic on all most all branches. Has anyone had this problem? My big leaf also starts to show problem too. The lower leaves drop quite early. Those dropping leaves usually have dark spots as shown in the 2nd pic. Some new growth start to die as well. I can't figure out whether it was too much water or too little as I don't think I water it as much as last year or as much as they do at the nursery but lower leaves dropping usually indicate root rot?

Comments (8)

  • 11 years ago

    Any chance of a picture of the entire plant?


  • 11 years ago

    Have you checked for spider mites?

  • 11 years ago

    Here are the pics. I do not see any sign of pest :(


  • 11 years ago
    last modified: 11 years ago

    Pests like spider mites and caterpillars can deform the new leaves or eat the leaves (endings or in the middle). Spider mites can be quite small, about the size of a dot written with a pencil or pen at the end of a sentence. You can only notice them if you put a 8x11.5 sheet of paper on the pot soil and shake the branches and see what falls down. Winter damage can also damage the leaf buds and cause leaves that do not look perfect or normal.

    However, while I am not sure what it is, the damage on the second picture resembles the type of bacterial leaf spot damage I see in o-t-h-e-r plants. Since this bacterial infection can occur on those plants in Spring during periods of lots of rain like we have had recently, I would make sure you never water the leaves at all (unless you use foliar feed like seaweed). Instead, water the soil early in the mornings.

    I assume you have not used insecticides or fungicides, which can cause a plethora of responses from all kinds of plants. It is their way of saying "what did you just do to me???"

    By the way, hydrangeas do not do well indoors and many plants tend to catch spider mites inside the house or inside apartments so be advised. If you have the shrub inside, you can use a mitice for fight off an infestation while lady beetles and thrips can be used if the plant is outside.

  • 11 years ago

    Luis, I don't water the leave and my hydrangeas now are outside. I brought them in a few weeks ago when we had the cold front came in. My only guess of what might have done wrong to the big leaf was I water it with water with dissoved iron sulfate. Since lots of leaves were touching the top of the soil, so they might have gotten some splash :( As to spider mites, are they white? I did see some white small creatures crawing on the leaves of my hydrangeas but i thought they came up from the compost and soil. I do kill them whenever I see them though. If that is the cause of leaf distortion, it's strange that the only plant that is affected is little lime, not the Macs.

  • 11 years ago

    Possibility of overheated roots. Black pot, full sun, not good. See my post here:
    Cooked roots

    Carol in Jacksonville

  • 11 years ago

    Carol, that's possible but I hope not. it get filtered sun from 8 am - 1 pm. If that's the case, it won't survive our summer sun :(