I haven't seen much activity lately so I thought I'd post. Where is everyone? How are your trees? Any updates?
So I thought I'd share this little success story since I think it might help someone else. Allow me to preface this with the following: I would not have done this if it were a grafted tree. This is a seed-grown tree on its own roots.
So, anyway, last fall I decided to get a grocery store rosemary plant and try to grow one indoors again, unfortunately it had an extreme infestation of spidermites and it spread to my rangpur lime and fig tree before I caught it and threw the plant out. Unfortunately I've been really busy lately and didn't have time to do anything more than spray them down, so since normal methods weren't working and since they'd eaten so much of the tree before I had a chance to get to them I decided to go the nuclear option. I soaked the tree and removed all of the existing foliage. (All in all I removed about 70% of the tree). Since the foliage was all severely damaged I figured it wasn't worth saving anyway. I kept watering the tree as normal and gave it some granular fertilizer and kelp meal. Then in the last few weeks it has totally taken off with new growth. More branching than I've ever seen. Now I'm trying to decide where to go with this tree. (I shape all my trees and am considering transforming the rangpur into a true, shaped, bonsai specimen. Back and forth on that one.) Anyone have any fun suggestions? I'll post a photo of it in the comments.