Don't spray for curculio now, not until petal fall. Lots of people here use Spectracide "Once and Done" Triazicide.

Hi all, I'm happy to report that not long after I posted the pics of our calamondin in crisis, it started to bounce back and has been okay for the past couple of months. Trace and Serge, thanks for your questions and suggestions. We have not tried flushing the plant with copious amounts of water, and we haven't looked at the roots lately. Mainly for fear that pulling it out of the pot would just add stress to an already stressed plant. That was going to be the next thing we did, if it hadn't bounced back. I'm not entirely sure what stopped its decline, but here are a couple of things we started doing differently. First, we resumed the practice of adding a bit of vinegar with each watering. Second, we stopped misting the leaves. I may be way off base, but it seemed to me that the misting may have been the primary cause of its grief. Third, I took Steve's suggestion and ordered some Foliage Pro, which I've been adding every other week or so. But it should be noted that the leaf dropping and general decline stopped before the fertilizer arrived in the mail. So it seems safe to say that while the fertilizer is helping the plant -- the remaining leaves are a much deeper green and in general look healthier than they have in quite a while -- it seems that the leaf drop may have been the result of something other than nutrient deficiency alone. Maybe? In any case, the story has again taken a complicated turn in the past week or so: the plant has started to put out a flush of blossoms, which in some places is quite profuse. A few new leaves are also coming in, although unfortunately not nearly as many as there are new blossoms. At the same time, she has started to drop leaves once again. As I noted in my initial post, the leaf issues started in the first place after a similarly spectacular flush of blossoms several months ago. Is it possible that the plant is somehow putting too much energy into producing blossoms? In any case, should we pinch off some of the blossoms? Would that help generate more leaves? And I assume that during this phase of budding, fertilizer is particularly important? One final thing to note: From an original five trunks, the tree is now down to two. Does the death of entire trunks suggest that the (or at least a) problem may be in the root structure? Thanks in advance for any thoughts folks want to share. I'm adding a pic of the blossoms and of the trunks.

Carol, You're welcome. Gary has a wonderful assortment of plants, and if I lived anywhere near Tulsa, I'd visit the Farmer's Market and other places where he sells plants so often he'd probably think I was stalking him. I've been outside mowing up leaves this morning, collecting them in the grass catcher, and then dumping them into black lawn-and-leaf bags. It takes a lot of lawnmower grasscatcher bags full of mown leaves to fill up one big lawn and leaf bag. I hope to fill up 150 of those bags in the coming weeks so I'll have oodles to dump onto the garden beds. The wind is blowing hard and bringing down lots of leaves this week, so I should get a few bags done this week, but it is still warm enough during the day that I have to watch for snakes. My most recent snake sighting was a little skinny non-venomous snake in the garden on Monday. Even after the first few freezes, the ground is still pretty warm and the snakes come out on warm days. I usually don't see any snakes after December 1st though. My plan is to mow leaves all day, taking periodic rest breaks which double as housework breaks---so I can come inside from mowing leaves, sit down and rest a minute while I drink something cold, and then do laundry or vacuum or whatever before going back outside. I can get a lot done when I alternate back and forth because it keeps me from getting too bored. If I tried to mow leaves all day without a break, I'd get bored and just stop. I noticed a few onions in the garden today. Guess I missed a couple when I harvested, so I'll have to dig in the soil around them and see what I've got. With all the wind blowing and the grasses dormant and dry, I've been somewhat concerned about the prospects of grassfires, but so far it's been pretty quiet with only a couple of them lately. In the meantime, I'm a leaf-mowing maniac.

I think you maybe reading too much into the linked article. They are offering you general guidelines, not any absolutes. So just to be clear I am not saying it isn't in soil, it is. It is all soil. I am saying that it isn't ONLY in the soil. It is also in the air and on surfaces all around you. Soil-less potting mix starts out at the factory as sterile. (Bales of peat do not.) During transport, storage, and once you open the bag it is no longer sterile. The extension offices are quite right in saying start out with a sterile soil-less mix. That improves your odds. But they are not saying that you still can't get damp-off even when you do. That is an important distinction. What I am trying to tell you is the fungus spores, just like all other fungus is in the air all around us. The only way you could prevent the fungus from coming in contact with your plants is by doing the whole process in a vacuum. You can't so there is no need to dump out mixes because the new you get will quickly also be contaminated. But it isn't the inactive floating-around fungus spores in the soil or in the air or on the container that do the damage. They just lie there, dormant, unless they are given the conditions they need to go active, to grow and replicate and produce the toxins that do the damage. Deny any fungus spore acidic pH, humidity, excess moisture, and expose it to good air circulation and it remains dormant and eventually dies. <Knowing that my plants are going to start off under the lights, would you recommend switching back to my smaller 72-count cells, or should my 50-counts work equally well as long as I go more by the weight and not soil appearance to judge dryness?> I don't think it makes any difference. We start all our plants in the greenhouses in bulk flats and then transplant to 6 packs or other larger containers depending on planned sale form. Many times I have started 20-30 tomato seeds in each cell of a 4 pack when I'm only germinating a small number of the variety. That way I can get 100-200 plants going in a small space. But as long as I use a soil-less potting mix that is pH balanced, keep good air circulation going, and limit the water there are no problems. Dave