SHOP PRODUCTS
Houzz Logo Print
ecomtl

New citrus owner: Meyers and Calamondins

ecomtl
18 years ago

Hello!!

I have been reading here alot lately. I found the site while researching information on calamondins, I got one in July. You guys helped me alot with some things that were bothering me, I concluded by advice here that most of it is completely normal (ie older leaf drop, substantial premature fruit drop etc...) .

I do have a problem with my meyer I got two weeks ago (I know alot of you said they were troublesome, but I could not help buying one, I'm hooked). I received it with alot of brand new light green growth, but now the small new leaves keep jumping off the plant! Even the apex just dries and browns or the entire young twig the leaves grew from falls off!

Not all light green leaves have dropped, seems maybe cause they are a bit bigger & older they are hanging on more...I don't know. Only a few of the remaining new leaves seem to be developing abnormally, all the others are ok. Those that dropped seem to have petiols attached only part of the time, so that doesn't help the diagnosis!

I will admit to moving it around a lot in my appartment chasing the sunbeams. Since it has 5 fist-sized lemons on it, I want to keep it in full light as much as possible. If I keep it stationary, it will never come close to getting a min. of 4 hours of light a day. I also did clean every single leaf (almost the day I got it) to rid it of the white residue from whatever they use at the nurserie. I didn't touch the new growth, they didn't have the residue. This is when I had my first casualties, three teeny leaves but I was sure it was just from moving it a bit briskly when cleaning the other leaves. Since then though I lose leaves just from a calm breeze it seems. I cleaned my calamondin as well and it did not lose any of it's few new leaves, but it's not producing anymore growth as it seems the terminal buds have dried on that to!

I have since sprayed both plants with nicotine water with a dab of dish soap in case there were critters that I could not see.

Because I'm actually losing brand new growth, the Meyer is what's bothering me more between the two. Should I be? Am I being an over protective new mother here?? Is this just them saying "let me get used to the place?" or is it the moving around into sunbeams? I can't see the leaf washing being it but who knows I guess (I used a very weak solution of alcohol and dish soap in water).

I'm sorry my post is so long, but based on what I read, I tried to give all details on common things you guys tend to ask when someone posts a problem, wanted to be proactive.

Comments (18)