Hey Pelham,

I wrote a reply to this message a couple of days ago but for whatever reason it did not go through. I will try again :)

I had a similar situation with my 3 Duncan Grapefruits this winter. I had a bout with scale all winter long speading from my fingerlime to ever Citrus I owned at the time. The Grapefruit trees took it hard, one loosing 70% of it's leaves and the other lost about 50% before it was all said and done. I also aparently had 2 spotted spider mites whic from what I was told was causing the majority of the leaf loss. You can tell if you have them by looking for little spider strings on the tree. So here are some questions and suggestions.

1) Have you cleaned off the tree of all scale and erradicated them all. If not, even though a lot of people may scorn me for the reccomendation, I reccomend 1-2 Tablespoons of Malithion and 1 tablespoon of Petrolium based horticutural oil. Please be aware that you may loose a few more of the old leaves from this because it weighs them down, however they were most likely going to fall anyway. I have a feeling you may not loose any since a storm really ripped them off the tree. If you have any of the leaves that fell off still lying around you may want to put them in a flatbed scanner and scan them at about 1200dpi and see if you have any spider strings on them as well, if you do, this will justify this treatment a bit further.

2) I would reccomend a good fertilizer to encourage growth, don't burn out the roots, but a good kick may help it out.

3) Re-apply the Malithion about 1-1.5 months later again to make sure the scale (& mites if applicable) is dead, dead, and ohh did I mention dead. Use 1 teaspoon each this time instead of 2 and 1.

You may find that the scale may wind up making the tree grow many more leaves than you ever thought it could.

Once I killed these suckers off, for every leaf lost I got at minimum 8 leaves and a new shoot off the tree.

BTW, my Dunacan Grapefruits are planted from seed, not a graft, just as a note.

Hope this helps ya out.

VTY
-Mark

Thanks for the reply Mark.

The scale have been eradicated using fruit & vegetable spray with pyritherins. I should be all set with respect to the pests -- at least until wintertime. The tree is starting to grow which is good.

What I'm mainly trying to determine is -- if I prune off the branches that are low (slightly above the graft), with no additional growth starting up high - will this be detrimental to the tree. I'd prefer growth up high rather than down low where the current growth flush is happening but its been through a lot and I don't want to kill it.

Cheers,
Pelham

Well, since you had a ton of leaf loss I would say keep that growth for now. Let the tree generate some photosynthesis and gain it's strength back. I am sure you will get more growth at the top as time goes on.

MY Grapefruit #1 & #2 are now going through their 2nd growth spirt of the year and most of that growth is high. The first spurt sort of rolled from the lowest point of about 1 inch above the dirt all the way up to the bare point on the tree and took a month before all the leave came out totally. They are still getitng larger now from the 1st growth spurt which made the tree quite full. I just hope you have the same positive effect ultimately from a bad situation such as I had.

VTY
-Mark

Leaving it alone (not pruning) and allowing for some photosynthesis was my initial thought as well. So, that sounds like a good plan.

With a healthy trunk and good roots, hopefully it will bounce back quickly. I'm going to fertilize this week with Miracid and add a little slow release citrus fertilizer to keep up the micronutrients. That should also to encourage more growth.

Glad yours came back, and hopefully mine will do the same!

all the best,

Pelham