Fiber Fool

Comment by Chris

November 25, 2008 @ 10:43 pm

Oh no! Good luck… :(

It was nice to see a familiar name in IWK this week. :)

Comment by Debi Leshin

November 26, 2008 @ 12:59 am

Congrats on the IK preview Kristi!

I had a lemon tree years ago and I’m sorry to report the leaves dropped an adios Mr. Limon! :(

Call the nursery and ask what to do!!

Comment by Hillary

November 26, 2008 @ 10:34 am

Oh I really hope that you can save your lemon tree. I love the idea of growing your own lemons.

Comment by hannah

November 26, 2008 @ 1:18 pm

Try washing it to get rid of the aphids. Use the sprayer in your sink to get enough water pressure to really knock them off. Maybe a little soap, too.

Comment by cyndy

November 26, 2008 @ 2:18 pm

too bad about the tree, the blossom is beautiful….

wish I could offer some help, the only thing I know about for aphids are ladybugs…and they have all packed up for the winter !

Comment by lynne s of oz

November 26, 2008 @ 8:24 pm

Is the air in your place dry? Colorado gets very dry in winter, doesn’t it? It might be suffering from low humidity. Try spraying it a couple of times a day with one of those two dollar water bottles. If you can stand the smell, add some seaweed extract to it. Adding fish emulsion is going too far, especially indoors.
Also how wet or dry is the soil its in? If the soil is pulled away from the pot, it is too dry. You’ll need to plunk the whole pot and plant in a container that’s big enough to soak the whole rootball. Soak it for a couple of hours, then let it drain and water it when the soil feels barely damp on top, or sorta dryish if you stick a finger in it. On the other hand, if the soil is wet, or it is sitting in water all the time, the roots get sulky and don’t do their job because they are drowning. Let it dry out a little, not a lot, between waterings - just barely damp is good!
The bugglies? Can you squish them = likely aphids. If they have hard shells/ look like scale, they won’t disappear unless you wash/scrape them off.
Oh one last thing, take off any remaining lemons and the flowers - the plant is making a last stand against not being able to reproduce. It is hard to do but you want to encourage new leaves not lemons.
Hope this helps! (Something else is niggling at me but I can’t work out what.)

Comment by Elaine

November 27, 2008 @ 3:42 am

It’s almost certainly down to your heating/air circulation. Lemon trees hate dry air and always do better in a garage, conservatory or green house - as a last resort you could try a room where you tend not to heat - maybe the kitchen? Be careful not to overwater it’s really easy to induce root rot - make sure the soil is completely dry before watering, they hate getting their feet soggy.

Comment by mrspao

November 27, 2008 @ 5:10 pm

We have a lemon tree in our conservatory but haven’t experienced a huge amount of leaf drop though. Do you give your tree winter fertilizer because I know there are two different sorts.

I have found that it does take a long time for lemons to ripen (9 months!) so we’ve been waiting for ours for a while now.

Good luck with your lemon tree. I probably would stick with the spraying personally and look at the fertilizer.

Comment by Carrie K

November 27, 2008 @ 9:39 pm

Oh no! I hope you can rescue it! Lemon trees are reasonably hardy. We shocked ours with fertilizer and forgot to water it - it dropped ALL it’s leaves in like three hours, but it came back. It’s outdoors, but OTOH, we’re in mostly mild CA.

Comment by Birdsong

November 28, 2008 @ 1:23 pm

Lynne has given you lots of good tips. I would definitely call the nursery, and do that root soak.. it is possible that the sale items weren’t getting well watered. Two other things… is it getting enough light indoors? Mrs. Pao probably has more light in the conservatory… the other is that you can use a soapy water spray to off the aphids. Hope you have found a solution.

Comment by sue

November 28, 2008 @ 5:29 pm

OH NO! I had one years ago and it dropped most of it’s leaves rather suddenly. It needs good strong light-southwest is best-probably could use a good misting, and make sure it isn’t someplace where it gets cold/cool breezes. Mine WAS too close to a door, once it got moved it came back and did quite well. The watering info was right on target. Unfortunately I lost mine when we got a sudden unexpected hailstorm. No idea what was in that hail but it killed off our veggie garden as well. The plants seemed fine then just withered and died. If it was greenhouse grown it is quite a shock to suddenly be taken out of that environment and thrust into a ‘normal’ home.

I wish you much luck and the scent of the flowers is amazing!

Comment by CindyCindy

December 5, 2008 @ 1:25 pm

I had Meyer lemon trees for years, but eventually they would all die from white flies. It’s a lack of humidity that makes it so hard to keep the tree. Good luck!

Comment by dana

December 30, 2008 @ 9:29 pm

if its aphids then spray it with soapy water however first try on a single leaf and see what happens some plants react badly to it

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