There's not enough info to make a meaningful conclusion, but at first glance, it appears that you've been over-watering and/or the medium is too water retentive.

In saturated soils that drain poorly, low oxygen
levels cause Fe (iron) and Mn (manganese) to become electron
acceptors, which leads to the precipitation of both; so, even though
these elements might be present in soils at normally adequate levels,
they're not available to the plant because they're 'locked up' in an insoluble form. This would account for the chlorotic new growth. Soggy soils also make
uptake of Ca difficult or impossible. The misshaped and hooked leaf tips are a classic symptom of a Ca deficiency.

If you tell us all you can think of about the soil, your watering habits, and what you're doing insofar as nutritional supplementation, I'm sure I can get you out of trouble.

Al

I have no idea what the soil is. Someone gave me it before the quarantine. What do I do?

"I have no idea what the soil is. Someone gave me it before the quarantine. What do I do?" You can still tell us all you can think of about the soil, your watering habits, and what you're doing insofar as nutritional supplementation.

Whether or not the medium is structurally appropriate for the plant is a major issue. For example, if the medium is largely composed of fine particles like peat, coir, compost, composted forest products, fine sand, topsoil, it's very likely too water-retentive for the plant's well-being. If the soil is marginal, there are some easy work-arounds that can resolve the issue. How are you determining when it's time to water?

These are what I grow in:

All my trees are in this:

I use this ^^^ primarily for mixed floral plantings and veggies, but it's very good for most trees, too.

This should be helpful.

Using a 'tell'

Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support good root health, which is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to a build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor.

In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water.

Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'.

One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue.

Al

Thank you so much. I also want to apologize for the late reply. The soil I have seems very thick and moisture absorbing. Do I transplant the plant into another pot with different soil? What soil would you recommend (preferably sold on amazon)? How do I know if my pot is too deep? It seems very deep for the tree. Any tips on how big the pot should be?

If you're using a water-retentive medium, deep pots are easier to grow in because they will have a higher % of soil that isn't saturated when a perched water table is in play:

Choosing an Appropriate Size Container

How large a container ‘can’ or ‘should’ be, depends on the relationship between the mass of the plant material you are working with and your choice of soil. We often concern ourselves with "over-potting" (using a container that is too large), but "over-potting" is a term that arises from a lack of a basic understanding about the relationship we will look at, which logically determines appropriate container size.

It's often parroted that you should only move up one container size when "potting-up". The reasoning is, that when potting up to a container more than one size larger, the soil will remain wet too long and cause root rot issues, but it is the size/mass of the plant material you are working with, and the physical properties of the soil you choose that determines both the upper & lower limits of appropriate container size - not a formulaic upward progression of container sizes. In many cases, after root pruning a plant, it may even be appropriate to step down a container size or two, but as you will see, that also depends on the physical properties of the soil you choose. It's not uncommon for me, after a repot/root-pruning to pot in containers as small as 1/5 the size as that which the plant had been growing in prior to the work.

Plants grown in ‘slow’ (slow-draining/water-retentive) soils need to be grown in containers with smaller soil volumes so that the plant can use water quickly, allowing air to return to the soil before root issues beyond impaired root function/metabolism become a limiting factor. We know that the anaerobic (airless) conditions that accompany soggy soils quickly kill fine roots and impair root function/metabolism. We also know smaller soil volumes and the root constriction that accompany them cause plants to both extend branches and gain o/a mass much more slowly - a bane if rapid growth is the goal - a boon if growth restriction and a compact plant are what you have your sights set on.

Conversely, rampant growth can be had by growing in very large containers and in very fast soils where frequent watering and fertilizing is required - so it's not that plants rebel at being potted into very large containers per se, but rather, they rebel at being potted into very large containers with a soil that is too slow and water-retentive. This is a key point.

We know that there is an inverse relationship between soil particle size and the height of the perched water table (PWT) in containers. As particle size increases, the height of the PWT decreases, until at about a particle size of just under 1/8 inch, soils will no longer hold perched water. If there is no perched water, the soil is ALWAYS well aerated, even when the soil is at container capacity (fully saturated).

So, if you aim for a soil (like the gritty mix) composed primarily of particles larger than 1/16", there is no upper limit to container size, other than what you can practically manage. The lower size limit will be determined by the soil volume's ability to allow room for roots to ’run’ and to furnish water enough to sustain the plant between irrigations. Bearing heavily on this ability is the ratio of fine roots to coarse roots. It takes a minimum amount of fine rootage to support the canopy under high water demand. If the container is full of large roots, there may not be room for a sufficient volume of the fine roots that do all the water/nutrient delivery work and the coarse roots, too. You can grow a very large plant in a very small container if the roots have been well managed and the lion's share of the rootage is fine. You can also grow very small plants, even seedlings, in very large containers if the soil is fast (free-draining and well-aerated) enough that the soil holds no, or very little perched water.

I have just offered clear illustration why the oft repeated advice to ‘resist potting up more than one pot size at a time’, only applies when using heavy, water-retentive soils. Those using well-aerated soils are not bound by the same restrictions. As the ht and volume of the perched water table are reduced, the potential for negative effects associated with over-potting are diminished in a direct relationship with the reduction - up to the point at which the soil holds no (or an insignificant amount) of perched water and over-potting pretty much becomes a non-issue.

Appropriate Medium

From my perspective, an appropriate medium is a medium that allows us to water to beyond the point of saturation at will, so we're flushing the dissolved solids (salts) that are present in tapwater and fertilizer solutions. These dissolved solids are left behind and accumulate in soils whenever we're forced to water in sips, which is commonly employed as a strategy in order to avoid the sogginess that limits root function and wrecks root health. It's important to realize that a healthy plant is not possible w/o a healthy root system. If you have established goals that include healthy and attractive plants, it's critical that you have a plan to avoid the limitations imposed by over-watering and an accumulation of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil solution.

Not every grower fully understands the dilemmic issues associated with inappropriate soils that force the plant to pay a vitality tax resultant of an unhealthy amount of water being retained for extended periods when we water correctly – which is to say, when we flush the soil to limit salt build-up. On one hand, we have the potential for over-watering, and when we act to avoid it by offering dribs and drabs of water here and there, we have high salt levels to deal with. It's easy to see how we all might benefit from use of a soil that allows us to water so we're flushing away excess salts without limiting our plant's vitality via waterlogged soils.

Al

Judging by the look of the soil, you are overwatering it. It needs new soil, and because of the availability of materials to make good soil, you will have to make do for the time being. Go to home depot and grab a small bag of cactus soil mix and a small bag of perlite and mix them 50/50. Let the current soil dry out a lot befor you repot. Knock all the old soil off the roots and use the same pot. Once this virus thing is behind us, follow the directions above to make good soil and water correctly. Use a chopstick or sharpened dowell to test the soil moisture and throw out the water meter. As Tapla suggested, they are useless.

Tapla, do you agree with Matt on the choice of medium?

"Tapla, do you agree with Matt on the choice of medium?" Consider this: Perlite has no internal porosity, even though there is plenty of trapped air inside the center of every particle. Other than what little aeration is gained by way of perlite's irregular surface, adding perlite to a potting medium is much like adding thousands of miniature ping pong balls. In your minds eye, imagine a quart jar full of any homogeneous combination of peat, coir, compost, - any fine material(s). Add a particle of perlite to it - what do you have. You have the same medium you started with surrounding 1 perlite particle, into which roots cannot grow. Add another 100 particles of perlite and you still have the same medium you started with surrounding 100 perlite particles, into which roots cannot grow. Add 1,000 particles of perlite and by glory you still have the same medium you started with surrounding 1,000 perlite particles, into which roots cannot grow. So, what has occurred so far?

The overall aeration of the mix of ingredients you have started with has decreased. Surprised? Start with a quart of ANY medium and add a golf ball or a BB to the mix. The golf ball of BB displaces it's volume in soil, so there is a smaller volume of soil into which roots can grow in the jar (because the jar only holds a quart). The medium into which roots CAN grow hasn't changed, it still has roughly the same amount of aeration as it had before adding the golf ball/BB, BUT, you have lost the volume of aeration in the soil that was displaced. So because perlite is not internally porous, every time you add a perlite particle o/a aeration decreases. So, you lose in aeration the entire volume of the perlite particle minus the small amount of aeration gained because the fibrous particles of soil ingredients will not evenly fill all the voids in perlite's irregular surface. The volume of soil available for root colonization is diminished by each perlite particle in the same way it is diminished by a golf ball of BB.

The primary advantage that HAS been gained by adding the perlite is a reduction in the volume of water the medium can hold. Each particle of perlite displaces soil that would otherwise hold water. Now, when a medium supports a perched water column, this can be an important consideration; but when we look closer, we'll see perlite is not very useful in the fraction of medium that is spatially located above the upper limit of the perched water column. If a medium supports 4" of perched water, there will in most cases be an ample volume of air and gas exchange ABOVE the upper limit of perched water. Perlite used in the fraction of medium of the bottom of the pot, the fraction supporting perched water, displaces medium that would otherwise be full of perched water when the medium is at container capacity (holding as much water as it can hold).

One strategy would be to fill the bottom several inches of the pot with a mix of 3 parts perlite to 1 part of water-retentive potting soil X, then fill the remainder of the pot with soil straight from the bag. We learned in a paragraph above that medium above the upper limit of a perched water column is usually adequately aerated/drained, so adding perlite unnecessarily reduces the volume of medium available for root colonization. The part of the soil at the bottom with a very large fraction of perlite won't necessarily increase aeration, but it will decrease the o/a volume of perched water the planting can hold; and, from the plant's perspective, any perched water you can eliminate is a good thing. Wicks can be used to eliminate a large fraction of excess water from media as well. See E below.

One strategy would be to fill the bottom several inches of the pot with a mix of 3 parts perlite to 1 part of water-retentive potting soil X, then fill the remainder of the pot with soil straight from the bag. We learned in a paragraph above that medium above the upper limit of a perched water column is usually adequately aerated/drained, so adding perlite unnecessarily reduces the volume of medium available for root colonization. The part of the soil at the bottom with a very large fraction of perlite won't necessarily increase aeration, but it will decrease the o/a volume of perched water the planting can hold; and, from the plant's perspective, any perched water you can eliminate is a good thing. Wicks can be used to eliminate a large fraction of excess water from media as well.

That said, you can use ballast (see D above) + a water-retentive medium, and eliminate up to 95% of the volume of perched water a medium can hold. This works passively - no extra effort on your part other than properly arranging the ballast when you establish the planting. Note too, how much excess water is expelled by simply tipping the pot (compare B to A).

Still, the best way to maintain root systems in a state of high vitality is by using a medium based on a very large fraction 75-90% particles large enough it holds very little or no perched water; ballast is the next best; and trying to amend a water-retentive medium by adding extra perlite could only be considered marginally effective, unless the volume/ % of perlite used is so large you're essentially growing in perlite amended with a water-retentive medium

Al

So what would you advise as a commercially available stop-gap medium to save the tree and get him through to the other side of the pandemic when he can more easily source ingredients?

With a plant that small there is no immediate emergency unless there is something toxic in the medium. All excess water can be removed easily. Something I wrote:

Newton's First Law of Motion

Under conventional container culture, it's a given that saturated/partially saturated media rob roots of the oxygen they need to function normally and efficiently. At best, soil saturation robs your plants of immense measure of potential in areas like growth, appearance, yields, ….. At worst, plants unable to cope with the strain of drought stress caused by saturated media will succumb to it. This isn't a 'scare tactic, it's a very simple and straightforward observation that will be difficult to disagree with a straight face.

Newton's First Law of Motion states that an object will remain either at rest, or in motion at a uniform rate and in a straight line unless acted upon by an external offsetting force. In this case, we will designate the 'object' as excess water in your potting medium. At risk of my being redundant, the 'law' can be seen as a simple statement about inertia, that objects will remain in motion and in a straight line unless a force acts to change the motion. To put the law to work for you/your plantings, you should water to beyond the point of total soil saturation - so the medium has been completely saturated and at least 15-20% of the water you have applied has exited the pot. Unless your soil is purposefully constructed to eliminate all/nearly all excess water, it's extremely probable, when the pot has stopped draining, there will be too much water in the potting medium for the plants' liking.

To eliminate this excess water: immediately after a thorough watering, hold the pot in one hand over the sink, lawn, or over-sleeping significant other and move it downward, then sharply reverse the direction to upward. You'll immediately note that a good measure of 'excess' water will “continue downward in a straight line” and exit the drain hole. The sharper the reversal of direction, the more water exits the drain hole. When you have repeated the exercise until water no longer exits the drain hole on the reversal of direction, you will have eliminated all excess water and your plants will regard you with a newfound sense of awe.

I would flush the soil each time I water, then remove the excess water as described above. I would also start fertilizing with Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 and using a "tell" to tell him when it's time to water. See info about using a tell upthread - posted about 2 weeks previous.

If he does want to repot, he only needs a small volume of soil, and any necessary ingredients can be found here.

Al