Hello! I live in Las Vegas zone 10b - never gardened in the desert so naturally I decided to get a couple tropical trees 🙄
Last year I bought a dwarf mandarin and semi-dwarf Rio Red tree, both fairly young (purchased from a large box garden center). They both stayed in that nursery pot through their first summer/winter and struggled the whole time, obviously.
This year I potted them up into what I hope is their forever home a couple weeks ago. Each has a half a 55 gallon barrel which has been sealed inside (no dirt on metal), drain holes drilled through the bottoms, filled with a well-draining palm/cactus mix.
Potting up involved removing as much of the old dense sandy mix from the grower from the root ball and settling it into the new, moist, mix. They were watered 2-3x a week for the first week, one water per week since (or weather is still pretty mild). They sit in an area of my yard that gets sun until about 2-3p - but I can place them in a spot that gets less (or more).
Both trees didn't seem to care much about the transplant at first; each lost some older leaves, both put on A TON of new growth and buds/blooms. The mandarin is killing it, no leaves dropped since last week sometime, smells and looks great!
...the grapefruit though 😬. A large portion of the small new leaf growth is dropping at a steady pace, a decent amount of the buds on the tree are losing the deep green in the part holding them onto the tree and will drop sometime soon. It's never really stopped losing the older leaves? I usually get a 1-2 drop a day. Honestly, I'd rather it drop the buds vs leaves - as soon as I saw the new leaf growth dying off I figured something was wrong.
I check soil moisture with a probe and dowel for extra measure; the dowel today came out on the dryer side of damp. It's overcast and might rain today, so they'll get water tomorrow morning if no moisture falls.
I know next to nothing about citrus and have been trying to learn as much as possible over the last year or so. Does this look like transplant shock or does it seem like an issue with the care I'm providing?
Thank you in advance - the knowledge in this forum is amazing!