Welcome Emily and Hello John! Emily, first and utmost, where do you live? When can you put your tree outdoors? That tree is small enough to wipe every leaf off with warm milk and water often. If it can't be oudoors for a while, I would watch your watering closly as John says. I must say it looks like it is in a great mix. Is that the 5.1.1 mix many here use? Mostly bark? Very porous? That was a great catch on your part, finding the mites. Most would not be aware of this factor so my hats off to you for controlling it. I would make sure it gets lots of sunlight at this point. even if it should drop all the leaves, at least the roots will stay strong and still push new growth accustomed to new light levels. I have many times actually plucked every leaf off just to have the tree come back bushier than ever. They are more resilient than one might think. I would of held back on fertilizing after an attack as so, because you don't want to encourage new growth in your warm , dry conditions unless you can figure a way to discourage mites from coming back to eat the fresh foiliage about to grow with 'constant' air movement aimed to blow towards under the leaves. Never shut your fan off and see if you can use a small table one with low speed. If I have had a mite infestation,I would actually snip of all the new growth until I can almost put them outside to be on the safe side from stragglers then treat and treat all summer so I don't bring them in the following fall. I always make sure the environment for mines are just right to reduce mites infestation possibilities. For instance. >If they are indoors, in my house, in a sunny window, I like to keep the room very cool with fans and moisture in which mites or any pests detest. >For those in the greenhouse, I fertilize regularly for new 'strong' growth along with moist air, and air that is constanly being moved my fans. I am not worried about spindly growth in this case or tender desirable leaves because they are getting all day sun and grow tougher. In there, I deliberately let temps drop to the 50's at night though again which mites despise. >At work, where conditions are very dry, I constantly wipe the leaves off those with warm milk and water, and shower them once in a while to keep the leaves clean. Keeping your tree in a well draining mix, in a full sunny south facing window, leaves clean, fertilizing very lightly to discouarge fresh tender foliage until you are ceratin you have no mites, will help your tree make a full recovery in time for outdoors. Please, don't fret if those leaves fall off, since many citrus shed leaves anyway for various reasons. As long as you are not loosing branches due to root issues caused by over or under watering or a poor soil mixture, it will come back strong once it sees the great outdoors if not sooner:-) Mike

Here's what I've done with a meyer lemon plant before. But I would wait to hear someone else say this is a good idea before you should try this, maybe I got lucky. I thought mine was about dead and I just figured what do I have to lose. I got rid of all the old soil. Pruned the roots lightly. Cut off about 2 inches off the end of each growing point then put it in some fresh soil and just wet it enough to allow the soil to set up. I kept it out of light for 2 weeks then I set it out in light. After about a month I saw some new growth. Once I saw new growth I fertilized and let it grow. It's doing good now and hopefully next season I'll get some good fruiting. Last year I only had one lemon but it was large and tasted good as fresh lemonade. I have a little one on it now but I don't know it's chances since it's in the garage at nights and days that don't warm up past 50. So the lemon hasn't grown much this past month, it's about the size of an egg now.

Alright guys, time to mix it up. Literally :) My trees are doing good right now, Forecast for this week is thunderstorms today and tomorrow, then hot and sunny for the rest of the week... Soooo, here we go. This is what I have to work with. I need help figuring the proportions. 1. Farfard Custom Mix. It's quite a bit finer than the 52 they were supposed to send, but oh well, what's done is done and this is what I have. To help with the coarseness, I bought coarse perlite: and finally, bark: So, there you are, Meyer lemon gurus. How much of what would you add to that Farfard mix? As always, thanks for the help and guidance :) Atheen

I am sorry you used the advice of the Home Depot "experts". Here is a quote from Al Tapla who developed the 5-1-1 mix: I can say that I haven't actually used cedar bark/mulch to grow in, so I can't comment on the practice directly or from actual experience, but I can say that because the tannins, as well as terpenoid and phenolic compounds cedar is rich in are known to be allelopathic (inhibit growth) to many other plants, I have discounted the likelihood that it would be a suitable choice for me. :-(