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daimeun

Update/Questions About My Orange Tree.

4 years ago

The first time I tried to post this it didn't go through so I will give a "quick "run down of my current dilemma.


Three weeks ago my lemon tree suddenly showed signs of fertilizer burn and I made a post here, that same day my orange tree dropped a ton of leaves but it was still all green besides a little black on the main trunk( more on that later ). The next day I woke up to find my potted orange tree completely striped of branches, leaves, and fruit by presumably racoons.


Before the massacre, notice the leaf's on the center fruiting branch dropped.


The next day, every branch is clean cut =[


At the time I was trying to figure out what happened to my lemon and the soil being too wet came into the conversation as it is 511 mix but was staying wet for a week and a half or more. A week passed and the orange trees soil was still pretty wet from the watering 2 weeks before which I thought might have to do with repotting from a 7 gallon to a half whiskey barrel. It was showing signs of dieback and the black on the main trunk spread quite a bit from the top down. I decided either my barrel was too big or the mix had the wrong sized particles ( some of the pieces were larger than 1/2 inch) so I took the tree out of the whiskey barrel and checked the roots which did not look rotten and did not smell. I then put it in a pot slightly larger than the root ball with new 511 mix. At the time I also repotted the lemon and a couple mango seedlings.


After repotting, you can see the dieback and black bark coming down the trunk.



It has been two weeks since the repot now and the orange tree has continued to dieback and the black under the top layer of bark has spread farther down. A few days ago the rootstock popped out 3 new buds but the scion has not. It is still staying wet for a bit more than a week which seems like way too long as the tiny mango seedlings that are in 3 gallon pots need to be watered ever 2-3 days. Some white dots appeared near the base of the trunk yesterday as well as black fuzz so I sprayed it with copper fungicide. Today I decided something really needed to be done so I cut back all of the dead branches and noticed the black on the branches smears into the cut but is also under the top layer of bark.


After being cut way back today, you can still see some black at the top. The top left is cut just a bit above the picture.


Not the best quality but you can see some white dots in the center that will rub off it bark if scrapped. One of the rootstock buds is on the top left.


Here you can see some of the black mold? that is smeared into the cut.


This is the other cut and at the top you can see the black is under the green layer.



At this point I really want to try and save the scion and while I originally wanted to keep it potted in case I move soon, I will do whatever needs to be done.

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