Hi all,

So in March I splurged and bought a pretty mature Navel dwarf in a #10 pot with a huge growing canopy and the pot was about 14" diameter and the stump is about 2" around. It had some roots growing out of the bottom so I figured it was root bound, and I planned to put it in a 20" terra cotta pot using Al's fast draining mix. I didn't have the pot at the time and figured I could leave it at least a few weeks in the black nursery pot.

Anyway, right before I got the terra cotta pot, we had a week with both extremely high heat that got almost 90 degrees, followed by a sudden cold snap that got down to 34 degrees at night for a couple nights. I threw a sheet over the tree that night thinking it would be OK.

When I first bought this tree, it was covered, literally, in hundreds and hundreds of beautiful scented blooms. The morning after the frost, almost all the blossoms fell off.

Since then, the leaves have started to turn yellow and fall off.

When the weather warmed up again a couple weeks ago, I was eager to get it into a terra cotta pot that I could manage the watering better on. Though it was a little root bound, the roots looked generally healthy. I pruned off one of the bigger roots from the center and took away some of the roots on the outside of the ball that were kind of tangled around. I was gentle. I was fast. I didn't take much of the roots.

I also pulled away a lot of the nursery soil, and took it almost all the way to bare root , and then I gently laid it into the pot with Al's mix.

In the 2 weeks since I've done that, over half the leaves have dropped. What's left are starting to look yellow. And now, several of the smaller twigs are turning black and dying.

A few days ago, I went ahead and watered it with a balanced liquid fert that contains all the micros and chelated minerals. I'm hoping if I just leave it alone at this point, let it dry back out and reacclimate it'll come back to life.

What do you think?

I suspect while it was still in the black pot, it got overwatered, then the hot weather may have baked the roots, then it didn't like the shock of a sudden cold snap.

I hope I didn't harm it when I repotted and root pruneds.

Should I be pruning off all these little twigs that keep shriveling up and dying?

Is there anything else I can do to keep this thing alive?

Thanks,

Kristi