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tropicalgrow516

Trees losing buds, leaves, and dieing back.

tropicalgrow516
11 years ago

I have a dozen citrus trees in zone in zone 7b. They have been inside my home since the last week of October. They were very healthy outside, with almost no issues (aside from one plant briefly having aphids, which I ostensibly eradicated quickly with a spray). Otherwise, I used no pesticide or fungicide.

Once inside, the majority started blooming and looked great at first. However, eventually, they started going downhill. The first thing I noticed on almost all of the citrus trees that bloomed is that the new flowers started oozing clear sticky sap at the base of the new flowers, where they meet the stem. Eventually, virtually all the new flowers will fall off on every plant that is blooming. The next thing I noticed was leaf loss on all the plants, though significantly worse on some than others. The leaf loss for all plants occurs at the juncture between the petiole and leaf, generally, first, before the petiole falls off eventually. Some of the leaves look normal before they fall off, though some have dried out brown tips. There are also yellowing leaves, which are often accompanied with the brown tips on the same leaf. This is followed by die-back on the areas that lost leaves. All the plants have some die-back, but, as with the leaf loss, some have gotten it a lot worse than others. The die-back and leaf loss has gotten so bad on some plants that two have lost all leaves and died completely. Two are rapidly declining as well, with one having about 6 leaves left and rapidly losing more. I fear these will die, followed by my entire plant collection eventually.

I haven't seen ants or aphids at all in the 3 months the plants have been inside, which I would think might be associated with the sticky sap. I have seen one scale insect over the 3 months the plants have been inside, which I removed. I inspect them pretty closely but there is a chance there are a few, and just haven't seen them. I doubt there is a scale infestation, as I figure I'd see more than one.

Other plants that I have, such as a starfruit tree, a Carrie mango tree (which eventually died), and a Day avocado tree (which has lost some leaves and has some die-back) exhibit some similar symptoms.

My treatment so far has been to spray all the plants with Safer insecticide soap at the beginning of every week, followed by a spray of copper fungicide at mid-week. This has maybe slowed down leaf loss on some of the plants, but almost all are still losing leaves at varying paces.

Please help, as I don't want to lose my whole plant collection!!

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