" I've been told it's that I'm over watering and under watering. How do I know the difference?"

YOU buy a moisture meter and stick it in the dirt at several places around the plants.

Thanks. Sounds like I am over watering. The dirt in my back yard is sandy, rocky, clay stuff, and it's pretty hard. The ground where I water dries up and cracks leaving flat pieces of dried dirt about 1/4 inch thick that you can pick up. It looks to me like the ground underneath isn't completely dry. So maybe I should just water once a day? I have dug out the dirt so that the water pool around the trunk. I can't say for sure, but I don't think I'm giving it more than more than a gallon of water a day.

I do intend on installing a drip system for our trees. But for now we just have a water hose.

I just got a little fertilizer from my mom. She said to dig a a small hole, and burry the fertilizer close enough to the roots so it can be absorbed so that the fruit will grow better. Should I hold off on that awhile longer?

We planted the trees without any fertilizer a few months ago, back in early spring.

I hope I hope the roots are not rotting. One of the trees is losing leafs now too. I've taken pictures, but I can't get a good angle, or a good picture of the yellow leafs. But I'll upload them anyway.

I can't seem to edit my original post to add photos. So here they are. Hopefully

Your yard looks very similar to mine when I first started planting trees. I even had a channel dug through the yard because the water was pooling in 1 area of my yard when it rained.

When you're about to water, check down about 2-3 inches into the soil. If it feels wet, don't water. (think of the difference between a wet sponge and wrung out sponge, that's wet vs dry/moist soil)

I think your citrus trees will be fine. I find it's pretty much impossible to kill them, but if you want them to grow a little better I'd put a little mulch around them. Keep the mulch away from the trunk though.

I would probably skip fertilizer until late August or September, and even then, do very little since they are young.

Lissome - The mulch should be at least 3 inches deep. This will keep the soil cooler and slow evaporation. You'll also need to protect those tender trunks from sunburn by wrapping them loosely with burlap, or making 'tubes' out of cardboard. I think the yellowing you see could be caused partly by the sun. Citrus are very vulnerable to sunburn, especially when they are young and planted in locations with lots of reflected sun and heat.

Here's a link to watering information from the University of Arizona. It suggests 1.5 - 2 gallons applied every 2 - 3 days (for a 2 ft canopy tree). They have a great selection of citrus publications available on their web site at http://cals.arizona.edu/maricopa/garden/pubs.htm

Good luck.

I planted a meyer lemon last spring. It came in a container that was maybe the size of a half gallon milk container, so basically no roots. I started out watering every other day, just letting the water trickle for several hours so the water would go deep into the soil. After a couple of weeks I stretched out the watering to every 3-4 days. When I tried to stretch it further, the tree would wilt, so through the summer I stuck to that schedule. once it cooled off, I gradually decreased to about once every 10-days to 2 weeks. The leaves got very yellow. When citrus gets that much water, it gets chlorotic (Iron defficient), but it was either that or it wilted from not enough water. Once new growth started in the spring, it was nice and healthy, beautiful big green leaves. I water now about every 10 days, still trickling in for several hours. It didn't grow at all last year, but this year its growing very well., Make sure your well around the plant is further out than the branches, to make the roots stretch out away from the tree.

Thanks for the help everyone. The navel tree is kinda looking a little yellow, with leaves falling off... it's the one who is actually in the sun all day. The Arizona sweet tree looks a little bit better actually gets a little break from the sun because house is blocking it part of the day.