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 Post subject: Help my Citrus
PostPosted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 10:24 am 
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Joined: Tue Mar 30, 2010 9:40 pm
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Location: 98º 28' 35" W 33º 13' 32" N 386m
I'm running into a problem and would appreciate some help and guidance.

Lasts year I purchased three Citrus trees produced by the Rio Grande Nursery, Inc. and consist of:

    Seto Satsuma
    Everhard Navel Orange
    Mexican Lime

All three are planted in large containers which I bring inside when ever the out side temperature threatens to drop below 45°F and they have been growing well. I used a store bought garden potting mix, I do not recall the exact brand, and the trees are kept out side in my front yard where they are partially shaded by live oak and the other garden plantings include Roses and a Weeping Willow. Geographically, I'm in Young county in North Central Texas. For fertilizer, I've only used dry poultry or rabbit manure.

Prior to getting these trees, I learned that USDA regulations limit the transportation of any citrus across state lines of states where citrus is grown commercially. This made it a bit more difficult to find a source, but these trees were shipped from South Texas and arrived healthy.

Last year, I noticed that some of the leaves of the Seto Satsuma and Everhard Navel Orange which started out smooth began to wrinkle. Apart from this, nothing else was wrong with the three trees.

This year, the Seto Satsuma and Everhard Navel Orange both put on a nice growth spurt and the Seto Satsuma even flowered. But, the wrinkling of the leaves has worsened:

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By contrast, apart from some leaf loss, the Mexican Lime is doing fine and is just showing signs of getting back to growing.

Can anyone please let me know what is going on and how to remedy it.


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 Post subject: Re: Help my Citrus
PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 8:36 am 
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Location: San Antonio,TEXAS
First of all you should buy some real fertilizer for the plants. Manure is not fertilizer. Manure is a source of microbes. Ground up grains is fertilizer. You can find them at this link. Look for something in a plain brown bag with lots of protein. I buy ordinary whole ground corn meal for well under $10 per bag. Alfalfa works great as does cottonseed meal. Whatever you can find cheap is what you should use. I scatter a couple handfuls of corn under the trees every month. When I first tried this my plants, formerly "fertilized" only with manures, shot out six inches in all directions.

Now as to your curling, something is on the plant...which you probably already suspected. :? Once you get real fertilizer down, that alone might start to clear things up with no further action. However, I would start spraying the plant with a 50/50 mix of molasses and milk. Put a little in your hose end sprayer and set the dial for 4 ounces per gallon. Spray tops and under the leaves and all up and down the stems and trunk. I know I sound like Jerry Baker, but listen to why. What the milk and molasses does is feed the microbes which live on the plant. There are at least 20 layers of microbes living on the outside of plants. These invisible critters help the plant fight off bug attacks. Assuming this works, after a few weeks of spraying and fertilizing, you should not have to keep up the milk/molasses spray...unless you want to. You can use any kind of milk (goat's, spoiled, strawberry, skim, reconstituted, or whatever). If you have a choice of molasses, get unsulfured. Sulfur and sulfates are antifungal and you want as much fungi as you can get.

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