One of my trees has started dropping new very small blossom which I know is expected, and the leaves are showing the first signs of drooping.

The soil at the bottom of the 30 cm diameter pot is damp but at the top it is almost dry. The tree could be over potted.

So is it possible that the soil around the root ball is dry and the tree needs watering. If it's lack of water is this causing the blossom to drop instead of natural and expected drop.

But if I water is the bottom of the pot going to be too wet and cause overwatering or root rot/damage.

Thanks

Just my 2 cents worth, but I'd say the pot is too big. I would take it out & check the roots. Maybe put a more free draining mix in. What are you using for potting soil/mix?

It's at least 25% bark and the rest is free draining soil. The place where I got it is supposed to be a specialist Citrus nursery (??!)

Would you give it a light watering?

Thanks

Yup, if it's that dry on top I'd water a little, but I still think if the bottom is wet & top too dry it's in too big of a pot. Would this citrus happen to be meyer's lemon??
Check the roots & see if they have root rot..or if bottom of roots are wet.
Many times when a plant is stressed the first thing people do is water it.
What I do is put a wooden skewer or dowel in pot all the way down. Leave it there for 1/2 to 1 hr & when you pull it out see how wet it is.
Don't fertilize now.

A 30cm pot (12 inches) with 25 percent of the mixture being bark, seems fine. What we need to know is how tall is the tree, and how full is the tree. - Millet

Duh, what was I thinking... I know there's 100 cm in a meter! I wasn't thinking & for some reason it seemed bigger than 12".
Any way you can post a pic?

The wooden skewer trick sounds a great idea - wish I'd thought of that?!

At the bottom of the pot the soil is I'd say only slightly wet, it's more damp. It's certainly far from soaking wet. The top is almost completely dry to about 3 inches and the soil is loose and dry if you run it through your fingers, feels more cold than wet.

The tree is 2 - 3ft tall with the longest branches about 1.5 - 2ft. It looks as though it has been well pruned back at the nursery it came from, so if it had been left alone it may have been up to 5ft. Do you think even with this the pot is too big.

Would it damage/stress it to re-pot it to something smaller if the roots have been damaged.

Or would it be best to water it with about half the amount I'd normally use so the bottom of the pot deosn't get too soaking wet but the top get enough water. And also then leave it without doing anything to stress it, like pruning any small bare branches which is the other thing I'm holding off doing.

Thanks for the advice

Nick

Hi Nick, If the top is real dry, then give some water if you want. Citrus do like to dry out before a soaking so they can take some 'dry'. I would still check the roots but THAT'S JUST ME - I'm nosey that way LOL.
If you have leafless branches, don't cut them unless they're dead. It will grow new leaves. How wide is the tree? Lots of branches? Is it a meyer lemon? Seems everyone has problems with meyer - fruit & leaf drop, including me. Maybe Millet has more advice.

Thanks Patty

It's one of my Tahiti Limes. I bought it last summer from a Citrus Nursery. It's a bush shape just over 2 ft tall with 4 main branches and plenty of leaves at the top and middle (a few have dropped but this could be natural loss) These main branches are between 1 and 2 feet.

It looks at though it has been heavily pruned in the past by the nursery (to make it look good for Sale?!)

But has these small thin branches that are 4 - 8 inches and some are half brown. They did have leaves on but these have dropped over the winter.

Thanks

Nick

Actually everything seems pretty normal. I don't thik there is anything wrong with your tree. Leaf fall is highest at blooming time. Citrus only develop less than one percent of their blooms. Always when you water a container, water it thoughly and completely, so that aproximately 20 percent of the irrigation water runs out the bottom holes. It sounds like in your anxiety about this tree you are under watering the tree and causing problems. A dry container soil at blooming time is a disaster. - Millet

A couple of years ago, the first time my Cara-cara graft ever bloomed, it produced only 10 flowers which became 8 fruits. I would say that it is 80%. But of course, the amount of canopy the graft occupies is 5 ft tall by 4 ft wide, and only 8 fruits? The fruits were very large though, like 4.5" diameter.

Last year, there were about 50 flowers but I've got 20 fruits, I maintained the same canopy size.

This year, I let the canopy gow just a little bit tall and wide, and could no longer count the number of flowers, but perhaps will give me around 30 fruits. So it would be back to 1-2% fruit set like normally most citruses do. If I hadn't been thinning the canopy out, I may be overwhelmed with blooms and fruits this year.

I reserve room for blood oranges on the same tree, and I want more blood oranges than Cara-cara. I have countless blooms on all types of blood oranges and pigmented oranges on the same tree, perhaps overall, I will get about 80 fruits this year, with 30 fruits comprising just the cara-cara, my biggest and oldest graft on this one tree.

As Joe, states so well in the above thread, whenever we talk about "percent," to get an accruate/true figure we have to talk about "real" numbers. If your tree has one bloom on it and that bloom successfully matures into a fruit, the bloom of your tree was 100%. If it had 10 blooms and only 2 matured to become fruit, the tree still had an amazing 20% successful set. When we say that a citrus tree normally matures 1% of it flowers into fruit, we are talking about what is considered a production tree. Even if a grove tree only matured 10% of it flowers into fruit, the tree would be crushed under it own weight. - Millet

Also emphasizing what Millet have said in previous topics, is that the tree will tend to adjust according to what it can support given it's current condition. In my case when there are very few flowers compared to the size of the tree, naturally, even a 100% bloom set is not a problem. But for a mature production tree mentioned by Millet, most likely anything above 2% bloom set could literally break apart the citrus tree when the fruits start maturing. In most cases, citrus trees will tend to drop a lot of blooms and fruitlets, retaining only those that it can support to maturity, making our lives tremendously easy without needing to thin out most citrus cultivars (there are some that would require thinning out, like those mandarins that tend to alternately bear crops).