Firstly, I am NOT a gardener. I have no clue except to put a plant in the ground and hope for the best, so I hope your collective genius on such matters will help me save my tree.

I bought a kaffir lime tree about 18 months ago, had it in a pot outside for about 6 months then finally got around to planting it and crossed my fingers. It seemed to do well at first, but then got some kind of leaf mite, so I put a trap on it's next-door-neighbor, the lemon tree, and picked the damaged leaves (which I later read was a mistake). The lime tree lost just about all it's leaves over winter, but this spring, got dark colored growth which turned into a few nice leaves. Yay, right? Well, then all the leaves fell off over the last few weeks, and now the thing is seriously struggling again.

Ok, so the soil seems kinda decent (I put compost in the hole when I planted it), but I can't tell you what kind of soil it is. I put citrus fertilizer around the base quite a while ago (which still seems to be just sitting there on top of the soil). I capped the automatic irrigation head that was right near it, but it gets a light watering 3x a week from a irrigation head a little farther away. In terms of sun, it's probably getting sun at least half the day.

The tree is about 2ft tall, and the branches are still all green.

Ok, so I know I am a complete gardening idiot, so please don't be too hard on me! Just tell me what I need to change. I'm guessing maybe I should scrape the fertilizer away from the tree but not sure. I can't think of any other relevant info, but if there's anything else you need to know, ask & I'll try to answer. Really appreciate any advice.