Hello, I have a curry leaf tree which had some serious black spot problems last year, leaves were great looking when they grew new but shortly after they began having black spots and they wilter, die and fall, new leaves would grow and same cycle again. This is a small tree and this problem is preventing it from growing as all branches are leafless after a while. This year, new leaves started coming out but the same problem still remains unresolved. I would really like to help the little guy, I have sprayed it with neem oil plenty of times in between last year and now but it seems to do nothing. I'm attaching some pictures so you can see his current situation. The black spots cannot be rubbed away, they are part of the leaf and I see no bugs in the plant. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks for your time!
It looks like many plants I've seen that have no infestation but are sitting under a tree or shrub with a scale or aphid problem and have been getting a steady rain of honeydew from above.
Thanks for answering. I have changed the location of the little guy throughout the year and currently he has no plant above him. I'm afraid that's not the problem.
The older and lower leaves on my 5ft tall curry leaf tree develop the same kind of sprinkling of grey/black specks on the back of the leaf, but younger and higher leaves are clean. The tree sits on my front porch in S. GA, with only a jasminne bush on the other side of the porch; there are no trees above the curry tree. I have seen the occasional white fly, which I spray with dish detergent, and a red long-legged bug which preys on the flies. Any thoughts would be appreciated
Let me update on the little guy. He's looking awesome!! He's doubled in size and produces great amounts of curry leaves of a very dark green colour. I've continued to fertilize the little guy with 2 types of guano, mainly a high N guano and a little bit of high P guano. This I have done for the past 2 years just the same. I decided to change the watering a bit, so I would water it a little bit every day instead of giving it bigger doses of water every other day. But I believe what really made the trick was a beneficial bacteria I bought to use in the soil, it supposedly helps in the absorption of Nitrogen, I believe that for some reason its roots were weak since it travelled in the mail to my country without soil and this must have fixed it. Of course it could have been care&love and nothing else... but who knows :p
