I have 2 orange trees which were in my rental when i moved in, and I promised to take care of them:



This is the Late Navel Orange tree. This one gets more sun. The leaves are yellow a bit. It hasnt really grown in size in 3 months, and only has little marble size oranges.



This is the Early Navel Orange tree. This one is closer to the fence, and gets more shade. This one has a lot of rotten leaves at the top, shriveled and such. But this one has 1 nice size orange near the bottom, although its not the right color yet, its green.



I water these things every 2-3 days. I take my garden hose and spray near the bottom for about 2 mins. When I'm done, I leave about an inch or pool in the bottom which quickly disappears into the ground. Any idea how I can make these tree's work a bit better?

I think you are watering too much. Be interested to see what others think about the lighter yellow leaves on the second one. I have a similar issue on two of my trees planted back in spring.

The one with the damaged leaves look to have been damaged by leaf miners. The yellow tree is deficient in nitrogen, have you been fertilizing, and if so with what?. Can't say about fertilizing at this time of year, as you don't list where you live. - Millet

i havent done a thing but water them. do you have to dig them up to add fertilizer, or you just sprinkle it on top?

are leaf miners bugs that eat leaves? cuz it looked like they were being munched.

live in SF Bay Area, CA. its about 45F-55F nights and hits about 70-75F these days.

I'll get a close up pics of the munched leaves soon. And maybe buy some fertilizer stuff at Home Depot or something.

Should i just take a scissors and cut off any leave that is eaten up?

Use the search function on this site and type in Leaf Miner. You will find a lot of information. As small as the pictured trees are, they should be fertilizer 5 times a year, spaced evenly between march and august. You can use a granular fertilizer spread evenly around the tree a foot beyond the trees branches, then watering in. At this late date, I would wait until march to begin. - Millet

How about a picture of the base of the early navel tree. Looks like some rootstock overgrowth that needs to be removed. Hard to see, old eyes.

oh the dark tree? ill get a pic of the lower part this afternoon.

Yes- the dark tree.

Here is the dark tree. It has 2 branches growing out of the bottom:



and a close up shot of the top the same plant, with the leaf damage:



And another shot of the lighter tree without flash, better showing the yellow coloring:



I picked up some citrus fertilizer stuff, it says 6-4-6 on it..

The two lower branches are rootstock and need to be removed.

Selkirk has great eyes. If you leave them they will steal the majority of the available nutrients and eventually overtake the grafted portion of the tree shading it out.

No, you do NOT need to dig up a tree to fertilize it! OMG. Sorry, that was rather horrifying to think that you would think you need to do that, lol! Just sprinkle the correct amount of a good citrus fertilizer around the tree at the drip line (edge of the canopy, because that's where the feeder roots are, not near the trunk) and water in well. Remember, never fertilize a dry tree. The damage to the other tree is Citrus Leafminer. Very common pest here in the USA. You can always spray the tree starting in the middle of June with a combination of Spinosad and a horticultural oil (such a Volck Oil or Neem Oil), and spray every 3 weeks through the beginning of October, to prevent the CLM damage. Don't worry about the damaged leaves, let them be. And, with the rootstock growth, just take good bypass pruners (not shears), and cut the rootstock sprout off flush with the trunk.

i snipped off the 2 branches at the root, thanks. ill leave the brown leaves alone even though i don't like the way it looks.