I have been planting all my citrus in a 100% CHC medium. I have two trees now that are experiencing root rot. I used CHC because I did not think this would be possible when using CHC! Any ideas on what I am doing wrong? I am using 1/4 to 1/2 inch CHC chips. My pots are basic rubber/plastic 12" pots that I have 8 drainage holes in the bottom of each pot. I keep my containers/pots directly on the floor after allowing the pots to drain after watering. The containers seem to drain very well when watering but this is what I found tonight. I have been having trouble with my grapefruit tree and decided to take it out of he pot to check it out...it had major root rot at the bottom of its roots. It seems that the CHC chips and particles had become almost matted in a water logged mess in the lower areas of the container. Is this due to using too small CHC chips? Any assistance is greatly appreciated!!

Are the trees too small for the pots?

This is curious about the CHC chips waterlogging like that.

What is your exact potting media mix with the CHCs? And how long have the trees been in that specific media?

I'm using the same size of chips in a ratio of four parts chips to one part ground coconut coir or milled spagnum peat. It seems to drain quite freely for me.

.....Alan.

Two possibilities come to mind.
If you overly compress and compact the media when you pot up, you will reduce the air space and probably increase the water holding capacity of the pot mix, especially at the bottom.
With CHC type mixes you are trying to get a balance between water holding capacity and air space. Pushing the mix down into the pot too much is not helpful.
Also all media will have a more wet 'saturated zone' at the bottom of the pot.
The height of the saturated zone will be different for different media mixes in identical pot designs.
However the same batch of pot mix, if properly mixed, will have a fairly consistent behavior, as to air/water balance and saturated zone etc.
The height of the saturated zone, tends to be pretty much the same, in pots of different heights.If a 12" tall pot of mix A, has a 2" saturated zone at the bottom, a 6" tall pot of mix A will also have a 2" saturated zone.

Citrus like to be frequently watered, kept moist at the upper airy part of the pot, but dont like their roots to be in the saturated area. This is especially true when potting up, and with younger plants.
You may need to adjust your mix proportions, and/or use taller pots to keep the root ball from staying too wet.

Pagnr, your post provides some good possibilities, plus great additional information. What Pagnr is referring to as the saturated zone is known as "The Perched Water Table". Also, root rot can occur when a tree is way over potted in a container that is much too large for the tree. However, I must say that personally I have never seen this occur in a CHC blend, but I guess it could be possible???? I would note that I have 100+ container citrus trees growing in a 4 to 1 CHC/peat moss blend, and I have never had a single incidence of root rot in all these years. Many of the containers are filled with the same mix as Tim's, a 50:50 blend of 1/2 and 1/4 inch CHC. All types of mediums will eventually degrade, and need to be changed. The advantage that CHC has, is that it degrades very slowly, normally lasting 3 to 5 years before the tree needs to be transplanted. The life span of CHC is even longer when larger chip sizes are used. I have some larger trees in a 3 way blend of CHC peat using 1", 1/2", and 1/4" chips blended together. Tim, are the drain holes at the very bottom of the container? I ask this, because I have seen containers with the drain holes placed 1/2 inch above the containers bottom. - Millet (1,029-)

Pics are extremely helpful for folks to make good diagnosis and suggestions. Have a digital camera?

All my trees are 2 to 3 year old trees purchased from Four Wind Growers. For the most part, the only trees that I continue to have this problem with is the Dwarf Washington Navel Orange Tree and the Dwarf Red Grapefruit tree that now has lost all it's leaves. I have re potted the Grapefruit tree in Miracle Grow Citrus Blend of potting soil, mainly just to see if I can save it at this point. The Washington Navel has several leaves still but they are looking very poorly. I have tried to aerate the potting mix it is in in hopes getting more air to the root zone. I have placed all the pots on a planter heating pad to give the roots a boost. I use the same style pot for all my trees...a 12 inch diameter pot that is 11 inches tall. The root ball for most of these were planted at about 3 inches from the bottom of the pot. They are basic plastic pots that have 5 or 6 drainage holes in the bottom of the pot in the outer ring or diameter of the bottom of the pot. There are no holes in the bottom center of these pots. Is it possible that I have planted the trees too deeply and the roots are staying too wet? If so, why am I only having this problem with the orange and grapefruit? As you can see in the pics, most of the trees are doing quite fine. Also, should I raise the pots off the floor with plant feet so the plants get more air circulation? Thanks for any assistance with this problem.

I would say they are planted too deep, and certainly have little room to grow further downwards ? Are the problem plants smaller than the others, they may be using less water, and staying wetter in the same conditions ? Are they all on the same rootstock, some rootstocks perform better than others ?

I have had little problem with citrus in chunky pine bark--several trees have been in the same media for 3 years. We had over 7 ft of rain last year and most of my contatiner citrus is outside, so they got lots of water.
The one difference with my pine bark is that most of it comes from dead trees where the cambium has been eaten by insects leaving only the outer material that is very resistant ot decay. I crumble the slabs of bark by hand leaving some relatively large chunks along with smaller pieces. I use potting media mixed in at about 1:4 to help retain moisture.

Remaining too moist is not a problem with citrus, AS LONG as the root system has an ample supply of oxygen. Remember, it is not the amount of water that causes the problem, it is the lack of oxygen that causes the problem. In compact mediums having poor aeration, the water displaces the oxygen, thus the root zone stays wet in a highly oxygen deprived state. CHC, and in skeeter's case, crumbled bark chips, both types of chips provide ample aeration, by providing 1000s of larger air pores hroughout the medium. These type of mediums could be moist 24/7, and the roots would remain in good condition, in fact do very well. This is the type of medium Tim's tree's are planted in, I don't believe being too wet is Tim's problem.- In fact seeing a picture of the root system of Tim's tree, I thought the root actually showed very little sign of any root rot. - Millet (1,024-)

As Millet says, an aerated moist mix is not a problem, and letting this type of sawdust/peat /coir/bark mix dry out too much may cause it to actually shrink in the pot, and become water repellent. It will be hard to re- wet, and water will run down the inside of the pot until it rehydrates.
On the other hand, permanently wet anaerobic pot mixes are only suitable for bog plants, and if anything starts to go wrong they will have a bog like sourish smell as plant acids are liberated from the "woody" materials.
Some "root rot" disease symptoms may actually be caused by toxicity, especially if the pH gets too low.
Container mixes can be custom made by choosing the proportions of various particle sizes, types of peat and bark, sand etc. The aim is to get a good balance of air filled porosity, water holding capacity, drainage, moisture content, physical support for roots etc, etc.
This balance will be altered as the plant grows, and extracts more water from the mix, and also as the daily temperature (evaporation) varies over the year.
We can adjust our watering regime according to the weather, and possibly
increase the sun or shade on the pot over winter or summer. Apart from that it is hard to correct problems that arise from incorrect mixes.

Lots of off topic (but educational) info in the above posts.. Back to the main point in questions:

1) How long have you owned the trees? 2-3 years old could mean you just got 4Winds trees a few months ago.

2) How long ago did the leaves start falling and how long have they been gone?

3) Did I see that Millet confirmed there is no root rot? Perhaps you sent him a link to a rootball pic that is not in the above set?

4) A cursory viewing seems that one or two of the other trees look good -- the others appear to not be thriving. I assume there is no pest history to mention. I also assume you've had these in the CHC mix for over a year and all trees are about the same age and had the same care? This eliminates most of the "container mix", "pest" and "care" concerns.

Putting them in the MG mix probably won't help even though it's fresh, that mix holds too much water and is not good for indoor citrus for very long. But moving it at this point will add further stress if the roots are as bad as you say. You probably should've waited a bit longer to let folks offer some other solutions.

5) The trees do NOT look like they are planted too deeply from my POV. I can see the trunk basal flare just above soil line on them.

6) LIGHTING. What I suspect.

Are these under grow lights? You haven't said much about soil temps so adding a warmer under is not always good, esp if light is not sufficient to go along with warm roots.

In general, growing citrus trees indoors near a window is not an easy task. Have they been outdoors much since you've owned them?

My Big Question: The two trees in question appear to be the RIGHT MOST of the bunch -- FURTHEST from the window and light. Is this always the case or are they rotated? If so, these appear to have the least amount of direct sunlight which could keep the soil the moistest -- which contributes to the root rot (although as Millet pointed out, wet soil with CHC shouldn't be an issue as long as air gaps are present). Not only is the lack of sunlight undesirable for food generation, it decreases evaporation from the soil and reduces transpiration from leaves which means less water "drank" from the soil.

Although this isn't good, being in the far right of the bunch wouldn't kill healthy trees over a period of a few months. It would take longer. However, if the 2 in question looked like some of your other trees do (minimal leaves) a few months in that spot would certainly finish off previously stressed trees.

The other trees appear to have diminished leaves -- have there been any vegetative flushes of new growth on them?

OK I found your other post (generally not a good idea to start new threads while the original is still active, but I'm new to this forum).

Did you find a lot of roots in the old mix you removed it from? IMO there does appear to be fine rootage missing from the rootball. But as others stated, it doesn't look horrible. Normally you'd see some rot signs on the those "medium" size roots that are left -- which I didn't see either.

What did you do with the old mix it was in? When it's dry, you should be able to visibly see the roots amongst the CHC. I'd lay it out and look. If you find quite a bit, something caused them to separate: physical tearing, like from rough handling a young tree without stakes, temperature damage (excessive heat or cold to the container itself), and root rot from lack of oxygen, usually due to drowning.

It seems that the root ball may be too close to the bottom.

Each pot can be different based on the mix, but there can be a perched water table at the bottom of the pot. If your root ball is 3" from the bottom, there is not much room for the roots to grow down and may be in that PWT.

you could:
1) Drill more holes in bottom,
2) Repot and put the root ball higher in the pot. I don't know of a reason why the media can't be up to the rim.

TimShultz wrote:

The root ball for most of these were planted at about 3 inches from the bottom of the pot. They are basic plastic pots that have 5 or 6 drainage holes in the bottom of the pot in the outer ring or diameter of the bottom of the pot. There are no holes in the bottom center of these pots. Is it possible that I have planted the trees too deeply and the roots are staying too wet?

First, thanks for all the help! All my trees are rotated weekly whether indoors, outdoors or in the greenhouse. I have not put any of these trees in the greenhouse yet because I do not yet have my greenhouse shade and the indoor temps of the greenhouse are getting upwards of 120 degrees in the afternoons and down to 45 at night..LOL. I have recently started putting the trees outdoors in part shade because some got a touch of sun burn on a couple leaves while in full light. However until this week, these trees have been kept indoors under a 48" 4 bulb T5 Grow light with two blue bulbs and two red bulbs...3200k and 6500k bulbs for both fruiting and leaf growth. Yes, several of my trees have in the past week started sprouting quite a bit of new growth; however, my problem trees...the grapefruit has lost all its leaves and is now showing branch die back to a small extent; however, there are very small dots that I think could be growth areas so I am tending to it with the others. The washington navel still has about 12 leaves but most are rough and wrinkled but they have not dropped off and the trees limbs are still a good color green so I am unsure as what is the deal with this tree. My older but much smaller Cara Cara tree has two new growth branches just this week so I am unsure why the problem with the other two. Finally, my mexican lime has lost all of it's lower leaves...they turned a yellowish color and fell off. It now only has the leaves on the top part of the tree limbs. I was hoping that it would get new leaf growth on the bottom part of the tree but it appears to be budding more flowers right on the branches instead of leaves! This little tree has had an extreme amount of flowers and fruit but the fruit all falls off shortly after the petals of the flower fall off. I am unsure of why it is flowering on the trunk and branches instead of growing more leaves?? I have re poted all these trees mentioned above in a 3 to 1 CHC mix with red wood shavings and I made sure to pot the trees to the very top of the pots so the roots would not be so low in the pots this time. Thanks again for all the help! Tim.