I have many fruit trees and ornamentals including citrus and rose bushes. These are all potted and placed inside a make-shift enclosure or the Cat Palace due to the damage these plants have faced with the over-abundant possums, rabbits and wallabies in my area. I moved away from home for several years and had to leave my plants. Unfortunately, due to the stress caused by the thin ozone layer over Tasmania, scorching hot Summers and starving wild life, these stressed plants rarely obtained leaves, let alone new branches. Many of my trees have either died or killed off half the tree in order to survive the stress. I've been keeping the remaining trees as quenched of thirst and hunger whilst restricting animal attacks since late January. Alas, the damage is done and some may die after this Winter period. My current issue is very small espaliered lemon that sadly hasn't been retied nor trimmed for two years. It hasn't grown bigger, and now it has yellow leaves with green veins. I had been trying to correct this problem with other methods, until I realised that the Pins I'd been reading had not actually indicated that this specific thing was an actual problem. Then I watched Gardening Australia as I often do, and they discussed this problem. Yellow-to-white leaves on otherwise green plants often indicates an alkaline soil issue, which makes it difficult for plants to access iron from the soil as it gets locked away. Most plants live in the 5.0-7.0 area on the Acid -> Alkaline range, which makes sense if you consider iron as an important building block of living things. All new growth is effected, which was the confusing thing keeping me from solving the problem. I was of the thinking "how can all these leaves be new growth?". What a d'oh moment that was when I realised my idiocy. Only a four months ago this plant had been eaten almost to the ground! Of course it was all new growth. The plant had no leaves when I was able to try and save them all. What I don't understand, and probably never will, is why this particular plant has this problem. I use all the same mulch, fertilisers, potting mix on all my fruit and ornamentals, yet this particular tree has the problem. Bizarre. Perhaps at one point I spilled some bicarbonate soda in the pot? I have been known to leave fertiliser boxes or jars just sitting around inside plant pots... or I spilled egg shells in the pot and hey'd finally broken down? Or maybe the nasturtiums, hebes, grasses and alyssium that had taken up residence in the pots whilst I had been gone had added or removed the soil properties. Anyway, I'm currently using an iron chelate foliar and root spray, but as the warmer weather is fleeing for the cold of Winter, I won't see any difference via that method. So, I am now adding agricultural sulphur to my soil. When the new growth of Spring arrives, I expect a very healthy citrus! I will add before and after pics very soon.

Labels: citrus, fertiliser, garden, gardening, iron chelate, plants, sulphur

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posted by Da at 10:19:00 AM