Hello Everyone! I am new to this forum, and am hoping someone might be able to shed some light on the problem I am currently having.


To start, I live in Phoenix, AZ. I have a few raised planters that are 2-3 years old. The soil is a mixture of raised planter soil, compost, and some generic potting soil (the cheap stuff you get for around $7 for 3 cubic yards). The soil does compact and decompost, so I've had to add soil around twice yearly to keep the soil level raised. I also have a drip/sprinkler system installed (the little heads that you can pop off that look like mini yard sprinklers). During the winter it would water for 5-7 minutes, once weekly (unless it was raining that week). Spring/Fall I water twice weekly, and then when it's super hot in the summer I water for 1-2 minutes, 2-3 times a day to keep everything from dying.


Starting last year (possibly even the previous year, too) I started noticing that no matter what I did, my plants (mostly chili, with various AZ herbs) kept dying, despite my best efforts. The plants themselves never seemed to grow, and would remain under 6" high for sometimes as long as 6 months. When they did start growing, the growth was warped, the leaves would be small and deformed, and any fruit that would grow would be small and shriveled. The only plants that seemed to grow were cilantro one year, and parsley this year. Those two plants almost seemed like crazy GMO, as they would get GIGANTIC. I'm talking both the cilantro and parsley reached 6' high, and 4' wide.


Fast forward to a couple months ago, and I thought my citrus tree was doing GREAT. It profusely bloomed in early Spring. Then all of a sudden all the leaves started turning yellow and dropping off. The stems started dying back (the pictures show the current citrus tree that seems to look healthy, however, it was twice that size before the die off started two months ago). I came to the conclusion after reading forums here that I was overwatering, and the blooming was a "hail mary" effort to not die. I immediately cut back my watering. The citrus seemed to start doing better, or rather the die back slowed drastically.


At this point, since all my peppers had finally seemed to be completely dead (I don't replant every year, I keep the same chili plants growing year after year) I started to dig them up (last week). When I started pulling out the dead plants, much to my surprise the roots were COVERED in this white powder substance. Not coated... I'm talking there was no brown soil AT ALL... the entire root ball was comprised of this white substance. It does seem to have a mushroom type odor (but I could be completely wrong) so I'm guessing it's fungus? White mold? Giant white mushrooms have been growing the last couple months. I thought that my cutting back on watering would clear it up, but it didn't. The weird part for me is that the surface of the soil seemed completely fine. The white substance started several inches below the surface, and has completely filled my raised planter.


My question for all of you is... does anyone know what this is and what to do about it? The planters are actually 7'+ across, and nearly 4' tall, so I'm hoping that I don't have to remove all the soil! I completely shut off my sprinkler system, and am only watering as little as I can to hopefully keep my beautiful dwarf Valencia Orange tree alive. I've also started sprinkling cinnamon powder on the soil (but I have no idea if this is actually going to help, or even how much to use?!).


Thank you so much in advance for any help you can be! I'm dying on the inside rn!!