I have a citrus tree in my backyard that I needed to move. I believe it is some kind of variety of grapefruit, possibly a citron, as it has a very thick rind. The tree has not been doing well since I moved it, and we have recently been hit by a heat wave. Someone suggested I treat it with vitamin B to promote root growth, which I have, but it seems to be doing little. I have been watering the tree multiple times a day and it is still dying. I really want to save what was once a beautiful tree. Any suggestions?
Major suggestion-- don't water it every day! Short of cutting it off at the ground, that is the quickest way to kill it. You do need to cut back the top to balance the roots lost during the transplanting--- I would suggest removing 1/2 to 2/3s of the top. Don't water unless the soil is dry at least 2-3 inches deep. If you can get a shade cloth you could put it over the tree for a few weeks. Skeet
I agree with Skeeterbug it sounds like your tree is drowning, let it dry out - try a week no water, maybe bring it inside if it is hot outside.
Soaking the roots in an antioxidant helps stave off the shock of severely cutting the roots in order to move the tree but now the Vitamin B1 will not help much unless you let the ingredients in the solution help you and you cannot do that by continued, every day watering. A good time to apply the B1 in solution is the day after you water and then not water for at least two days afterwards. For this tree you will want to provide about 3 gallons of mixed solution each time you want to apply it. You should water your tree often now hoping to see some turgid leaves with some water pressure to them. As long as you can see some green in the leaves you have a chance to help this tree snap out of its doldrums stage at the moment. For Maples here in containers that get fried I will water them daily to help bring them back but I do not water trees in the ground every day that have a silt loam to a clay loam soil. In a sandy loam or a sand soil then you may have to provide moisture almost daily to an injured root system as the percolation rate of the water away and out of the root zone may require it. You should not water every day or every other day depending on your soil type but you can deep water one day, give the tree some rest and then come back in three days later now after the initial transplanting. You are not located in an area in which the tree succumbing to a root rot is likely but can happen. Some people in this forum are running a little too cautious of water mold root rots when in our dry climate with low humidity and with our soil temperatures such as they are right now, we are more likely to get a dry rot from irregular or overly frequent watering rather than see a wet rot. Most people in this forum have not grown Citrus here to know how we are different than many other locations for not getting or even seeing a water mold fungus (principally a form of Phytophthora) develop unless the fungus is already in the plants system through propagation or we have a water logged soil with very slow to no drainage and little to no air movement. Another nice thing is that most saline to alkaline soils with warm soil temperatures do not see much water molds come about in the first place and your soil in and around where you are in Santa Clarita is known for being on the alkaline side (just look at what is left of the native vegetation around your area). Getting ample sap flow is your target at the moment. Not sure how long ago you dug up and moved this tree. I wish you had asked what not to do before doing it but I can relate to that. The time to prune the tree back by half or even by a third was the day or two, the first week, after you cut the roots, freed the tree from the ground and moved it to its new location. Now, you are kind of in a position to leave the tree as is or you may kill the tree by increasing the shock level it is already in by overly pruning it now. If you feel the need to prune this tree then snip back the top about 4 inches all the way around or just leave it until you see some leaves start to nod again (as opposed to the droop stage they are currently in) and later become erect again. You have no turgid leaves to work with right now and you just have to wait until you have water uptake imbibed by the roots and get some sap flow throughout much of the tree. A good sign is that the tree has not sloughed off the uppermost top growth just yet. The collapse of growth will normally start from the top and then work itself down. An allover collapse all at once is what you do not want to see right now. You have to perk this tree up, not hurt it again by overly trimming it back now or by over watering it with daily waterings. Give the damaged roots time to breathe and heal otherwise you may not be able to bring this tree back where you are located. Citrus roots are a little more delicate than many other tree roots are. If the root mass has been severely injured then you have to baby this tree for a while. You do not have adequate root system now to generate new top growth from an application of Nitrogen, all the while being at the expense of the root shoot development that already has been weakened. For your tree to have success after the transplanting it is the roots, not the top that you have to be most conscious of. When the roots settle and start to function again and grow you will have some new top growth later but for now you cannot force the issue wanting top growth as you will lose even more root system of what is left of it if you do. The top growth that dies out can be and should be trimmed out of the tree back to live wood but I would not go any further than a light trim for right now. Unless you feel the need to do a pruning instead but a pruning at this stage now is risky by the looks of your tree. Jim
I will defer to Mr Shep-- he has more experience with citrus and your climate than I. The shade cloth is still a good idea-- it will reduce the water loss from the leaves.
Skeet, you did just fine as always. Your active and well intentioned participation has been a real credit for many people in this forum. We should try to side with caution much of the time when in doubt or when we are trying to help people. I like the idea of using a shade cloth cover also as that will help protect the already, weakened leaves from sun burning any further and to help prevent more leaf desiccation until the leaves can perk up some. Jim
The first mistake that was made, for which now the poor tree is paying the price, is that no pre-transplanting thought was given, before the tree was dug out of the ground. When transplanting a small tree such as the one shown in the above picture, you should have taken a spade and severed the roots in a circle around the tree at approximately the drip line. This root pruning should have been done at least a month to six weeks prior to moving the tree. By spading, MANY hundreds of new lateral fine roots would have developed along the present root system, starting approximately 4 inches back from where they were severed, this is known as The Four Inch Rule. These newly developed roots would have done much to assist and aid the young tree throughout the actual transplanting and the period after. - Millet
Hello Laaz, I'm not sure. The tree was here when we moved in. I do know that it's between 6 and 7 years old. Thanks
Has this tree ever produced fruit for you ? I would remove just about all of the top of the tree & foliage. Leaving all of the foliage on will drain the tree of all nutrients. If the roots can't support it the tree will surely die. If you give the roots time to recoup without the strain of trying to support the canopy you may be able to save it.
It has produced fruit regularly. I stopped watering it a couple of days ago and will research a little more before I subject it to the additional trauma of pruning it, but it could be the next action I take. Thanks
If you had enough root system left when you dug out the tree then once you get some turgor pressure back into the leaves you can prune this tree back some hoping to trigger new growth. For now you have to monitor this tree to see if it wants to come back and you will see the signs the tree is trying by the leaves starting to lift themselves up again from their current droop state. Much of the time it is not a problem to move a Citrus tree of this age but what complicates matters for us is when we dig the tree out of the ground and move it in 90 degree weather and then we get hit by 100 degree weather rather soon after we moved the tree. The tree is in peril on two fronts, the roots being injured and the leaves being hurt by increased evapo-transpiration loss. All you can do is water the tree well and often when this happens. Once you see some signs of life coming back into the tree you can then prune the top back some if you want but here is where Citrus differs from most woody plants. Citrus do not put out immediate new growth after having the top pruned back. Without new root growth you will not generally see new growth in the tree itself after this kind of transplanting. All you want is for the top to hang in there while the roots are trying to establish themselves to the new location after they had been injured. When the roots recover or start to is when you may see new growth come back into the head of this tree but you have to wait for a while until you see the new growth emerge. It is not a simple case of pruning back the top and seeing new growth emerge from the trunk or in the lateral branches of the tree soon afterwards after a top pruning. For now it is the roots that control how this tree does for now and what this tree will do for you next year. All you can ask for is that not all of the softwood dies out of you and as long as you have water movement in the plant you should not see allover golden-brown to golden-yellow colored softwood. I've seen Citrus have leaves one day, drop them the next and by the third day much of the younger shoots have turned color already and a day later were brown and dead. You did not see much of that in your tree yet, which is a very good sign that your watering this tree like you did after the moving of it really helped but you did get caught with higher temperatures real soon after you moved this tree. It is the multiple combination of events of the roots being injured, the water pressure loss in the leaves as well as the increased transpiration loss and leaf surface injury is what all hurt your tree at a bad time. Now, the tree has had some time to settle and with the lowering of the current temperatures there will be less water loss in the tree and in the leaves, so you do not have to water this tree as much as you once had to. Now, you have to wait for the roots to get growing again and once you see the leaves perk up then you can consider pruning this tree if you want to. You do not prune out green growth in a tree that is already in shock. You are less likely to see new growth emerge soon if you do. The problem you want to avoid unless the tree stays in its current state is that when pruning a tree in shock we can lose more green growth later on as the plant sloughs off portions of the tree to better sustain lower and middle areas of the tree. We prune out top growth by a foot and the tree might slough off another foot of growth afterwards. You do not have two feet of allover growth in this tree to risk losing. Why try to force the issue when you have no turgid leaf growth to prune back to as shown in the photo of this tree? Jim
One further comment. When transplanting this tree to its new location, a hole was dug, which, of course, created a basin. The roots of a citrus, in fact all tree roots, cannot absorb nutrients nor even absorb water without first having a supply of oxygen present in the root zone. Therefore, although the tree is in need of a supply of water at this time, over watering, which eliminates soil oxygen, will be a death knell to this tree. The basin created when the hole was dug, frequently acts as a lake and retains water when watering is too frequently applied, and especially if the hole was dug larger than the root ball. - Millet
