What is your watering schedule for that tree?

oh my, I knew it was watering schedule... I can't get it right for some reason, this is the most challenging plant in my yard... to be frank, I didn't have specific schedule now. I was following it last spring and it lost almost all leaves by mid of summer. Since then I started following its look. If I see leaves wilting - I water it. This spring I've been watering it about every week or so... When it gets water leaves open up and it doesn't look that sad. But last 2-3 weeks it's been like that no matter if it gets water or not. I tried to poke the soil to see how wet it was and my screw driver could hardly poke the top part of the soil... so I went and watered it pretty good. The look of the tree didn't change. So now it's on a watering diet for almost a 1.5 weeks... until I understand what's wrong...

yes, iandyaz, I mulched around this tree with compost keeping it away from the trunk and this spring sowed some cosmos annuals to shade the base of it. Will it be safe to remove the stake, it's so close to the trunk... I'm afraid roots are all around it now...

Just cut or break it at the soil level. That may be your biggest problem. It looks like the entire trunk is wrapped with tape - the trunk cannot breath or grow. Remove the stake and get a moisture meter to check soil moisture. Good luck.

You leave and learn, right? I hear all the time that you need to paint or shade the trunk from our summer. That's what we did, wrapping it with this kind of cloth... I will take it off, I have nothing to loose, right? That is so funny, I have this meter, Mary, for my other plants and never ever had a thought to use it for my poor lemon tree!

Thank you all for good suggestions!

Where'd you get the tree from? Sometimes Home Depot and what not will have trees that are poorly suited for our area. Sour orange rootstock seems to do very well and in my yard it is amazing looking at the difference in vigor between citrus on sour orange and citrus that is not. If you decide to cut bait with this tree RSI growers in Glendale has awesome citrus all on the appropriate rootstock. Either way, good luck with your tree!

I've just found out that there are different types of rootstocks for citruses this week! It was an impulse buy from Treeland nursery on east side of the valley, Tempe. I was planning to visit them to find out about rootstock they have for them... I'm fairly new to this area and hearing that citrus, esp. lemon trees are like weeds here no matter what, our tree proves the opposite. I think that if it doesn't leaf out by this coming fall I won't mind driving to visit RSI growers! thank you, edmo247!

I was just thinking about how you said it started right after you planted it last spring. One thing you might want to check is how deep you planted the tree. If it loses all of its leaves a few months after you planted it even though you gave it water, it's probably planted too deep.

What I would do is water the tree so the soil is soft, then move away the mulch, then start sifting away the soil around the trunk slowly (so you don't damage roots). If you don't see any roots within an inch of the top of the soil, it's planted too deep. A lot of the time the nurseries will fill up the container after putting in the tree so it will be more steady and then the gardener thinks that's where the soil line should be. The soil line should be right where the first roots start.

If it's planted too deep you can still save it. You just have to dig it out and plant it higher (I usually plant them slightly higher than I want it to be because of the settling). You don't have to dig all the way out at the drip line but it's good to try to save as many roots as you can. Just know you don't have to save all of them. If you cut off a lot of roots then you'll want to prune some branches off of the top of it so it doesn't have a bad ratio of roots to leaves.

that makes sense as well, iandyaz, I will check that this weekend. As I said it was impulse buy, and we read and knew so little about the planting and growing it.

All of you asked good questions! I might read it here and there but totally overlooked with my tree! I really appreciate your help!

I noticed the irrigation around the border of your tree and ground cover. It's hard to tell, but I would recommend running one adjustable emitter to the base/ root ball if you haven't done so already. Or you can place your current line inside the border.

Good luck!

If the white wrap is cloth, it's fine. If it's non-porous, I'd replace it with trunk wrap or paint the trunk with diluted white latex paint.

Thank you richsd, it was a trunk wrap.