Improve air circulation or repot into something less water retentive.

Indoors the soil will dry slower and the temps and light are lower. Any pictures?

Most commercial potting soils are excessively water retentive. You will likely want to repot into an amended mix or a custom homemade mix that drains faster and offers better aeration.

Yes sunshine I’ll get some pics tomorrow during the day when I myself see a little better. My eyes are pretty bad lol.

So it sounds like a different pot and diff soil are in order.

KatieBeth no my plant is not severe at all. It still looks/seems healthy since I haven’t made the mistake of overwatering this time. I don’t think I’m understanding your shoe string thing though. Forgive me. I just stick a wick through the hole and that’s it? Just pile the soil around it to the top of the soil ?

Micky, hi.

What she is saying is you could stick a rope or something that will draw the moisture out of the hole at the bottom. You shove a rope or some kin of product she suggested up through the bottom of the pot to at least half way up. Then let the rope dangle so that the water is tricked to coming out of your mix. It's a great method of getting rid of the perched water table, the area in your pot occupied by too much moisture by drawing it out.

Or , as suggested above just do a re pot into a much better drawing mix. The mix would have to have a greater proportion of bark fines or per lite verses the fine part of the mix such as peat. Make sure to knock away as much as you can of the older mix from the roots ball without disturbing them greatly.

Mike

Both katiebeth’s and mike’s suggestions are good. If you don’t have the materials or an opportunity to repot and check the roots...sticking a shoestring into a center hole at the bottom will work. You can even prop your container up by a crate and let the shoestring hang down. If there’s any excess water, it’ll drip down the string. And as katiebeth said, the water pulled by the string will evaporate much faster than waiting for the soil to dry out.

During the winter, I would water with a very light hand. I’d poke holes into a water bottle cap and let water drip slowly. I’d water about half the amount I usually would then leave to do other things and come back to water the rest with that bottle later in the day. It worked well because any extra water that spilled into the tray took much longer to leak out from the bottom. Sometimes I stopped watering even before water leaked from the bottom. Good luck with your tree!

If your soil mix is indeed too water retentive I would skip the wick business and repot using a soil mix that drains better like 511 or something similar.

Ok. Here’s pic of the plant itself, which as you can see is still in a very healthy state. (Which makes me wonder if doing a replant is really necessary????). Now I understand better the shoestring thing. And I don’t think you can quite tell from the other pic of the soil but it’s just tiny bit moist. I stuck my finger in one of the drain holes and it’s still little bit moist there too. But again, is a repot/replant necessary if the plant seems to be doing ok???? And if I should replant (I’m NOT good with figuring out these things myself so I greatly appreciate all the help) is there like a specific brand/type of soil that is already mixed together that I can buy and put in with the tree? Again, I truly appreciate all the help guys and gals.

If the soil is moist when you stick your finger in, then the bottom half of the soil is still very moist! So I wouldn’t water it again if it was my tree. It’s not getting enough sunlight/heat to be very active so it’s functioning very slowly, think of it as a slow metabolism. It doesn’t need much from you right now except a watchful eye.

What mix is that tree in right now? From the looks of it, it could benefit from alot more added perlite. How warm is the room you have the tree in? If the temperatures are at 68F+ it should be okay to let the tree stay in that mix but only if it has decent drainage.

If it was potted recently, I would leave it in that container and do not overwater. Keep it elevated on something, so it's not sitting directly on the floor! Let the whole plant and the container be in better light. My container soil gets really cold in the winter, if it's sitting on the floor.

Ok thanks. I won’t water again. Until it needs it. But i will keep a close and watchful eye on it. I’m not sure about the Mix that it’s currently in. It was something ready-to-go from menards. I know that’s not helpful but I can’t remember. Sorry. The room is of average temp I guess. Not too warm. Nowhere near cold.

Sunshine it was potted midsummer. I was thinking of putting some rocks in between the pot and the drainage saucer so that it drains a little better. Think that’ll help?

I truly appreciate all the help guys. Thank you!

Never leave it sitting in water, always empty the saucer, rocks outside the container will not be much of help, rocks inside the container does not help either. Do the wick method and place the container on a stack of newspapers, the paper sucks the water out and then place it in it's regular spot. Sometimes I do that with my plants, if I feel like there's too much water in the soil.

Oooh the stack of newspapers is a really good idea! I’ll have to try that with my trees this winter

that pot looks huge. Way too big for that plant

If it were my plant I would do as Vladimir suggested, plain and simple and not wait. After looking at that soil, I can understand why it's taking so long to dry out. Two weeks is just too long and it's not even winter yer. Don't forget, you may be drawing the water out, but the roots are still being suffocated, the reason why they are not taking the moisture up the way they are suppose too, and add to that more variables.

Mike

Terracotta pot are best to plant because they tend to be porus. plastic tends to hold in moisture.

Mix is bad, make the 5-1-1 move AND but a clip on light and aim it at the rootstock/top of soil in top for warmth

Juice the roots and top pot, low light but lo wheat will be OK on top epecially if LED

Minnimouselovesme , you are getting all of this, right? I just had too)) lol What's your real name anyway if you don't mind me asking?

Seriously, just because your tree is looking good now, it doesn't mean that you will prevent an all of a sudden decline unless you handle this as quickly as possible. Many of us call it a 911 re pot.

Mike

Mike has a great point too. I had 3 trees that all pushed new growth in the same week during the summer. Around this time they started pushing growth again but one of the trees didn’t. I waited a couple weeks to see if maybe it was just slower but still had no new growth at all.

You’d think there was nothing wrong with the tree though because no leaves were turning color or dropping and it looked perfectly fine but I bare rooted it last week anyway out of suspicion. I found alot of roots rotting along the outer portions of the mix and some young inner roots beginning to rot in the middle. If I waited until seeing signs of decline on the outer appearance, even more roots would’ve been lost by then.

In the end it was better that I acted earlier before waiting it out. Even if you end up waiting, the tree can still recover but the worse off it is the longer the recovery time will be