With plants, nothing is ever totally hopeless - lol!

First off - how long ago did you repot it, & what does the leafage of the plant look like? Any new growth? Losing leaves? Color good?

If it's not losing leaves, color is good, or if there's any new growth - I'd just wait & see for a bit.

Now if you have reason to believe - besides what you've read - that the tree is doing poorly (trunk spiral notwithstanding), you might want to gently remove it from the pot & gently tease out as many of the roots as you can without destroying them. If it's so tightly spiraled that any root teasing is impossible, you can take a sharp knife or razor/box cutter tool & make a few cuts/slices vertically thru the tangled roots on 3-4 sides. Then repot back into the larger pot you had it in. The cuts should help new roots to form that will then be able to escape the "spiral" cycle.

Thanks Brezyb, I am feeling much better about my kaffir lime! Except for the spiraling roots and trunk it seems to be okay. I repotted it a few weeks ago, and the roots werent very tangled or anything, just growing in a circle. If I had known to do so, I could have easily untangled them then. It otherwise seems pretty healthy, not losing leaves or anything. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I harvested some of the leaves to make Tom Yung Goong, and they were fully fragrant, and flavorful! I had tried to make this before without them and now know that regular lime juice or peel are no substitute for the kaffir lime leaves. Thats why I am so desperate to save it. Tom Yung Goong is my favorite Thai dish!

I just went outside and checked it really closely and there do seem to be some teeny tiny leaves forming! They are right at the graft line so I will probably have to cut them off, but new growth is new growth right?

So I will take it out of the pot and untangle the roots and keep my fingers crossed. While I am at it, any suggestions/recommendations for soil mix/ammendments? I just used generic potting soil from Home Depot, and I am wondering if there is a better mix for it.

Thanks for your help!
Lydia

PS. Any hope of it growing fruit some day?

While I don't want you to lose faith in my suggestions, I have never grown a Kafir Lime before, but have grown many other container trees & would imagine the basic culture is the same.

Personally, I think your tree will be just fine. I've repotted trees where the roots were so tightly spiraled that there was little soil left & I could barely cut thru them with a knife. And they survived & did well after that. These included container-grown citrus & the familiar "Weeping Fig".

I would imagine any well-draining name-brand potting soil would be fine - but again, I'm not an expert here.

Since I do a lot of Thai cooking, I plan to buy a young Kafir Lime myself & keep it containerized. Here in VA I should be able to keep it outdoors for a goodly part of the year, & luckily I have a rather modern-style house where the living room is wall-to-wall glass with lots of skylights, so it should winter indoors for me rather well.

Thanks breezyb! And if you are thinking about getting a kaffir lime for yourself here is a link I found when I was reading up on kaffir limes. I was thinking about buying a more mature tree that is ready to fruit, but decided to try to work with the one I've got. They are supposed to be pretty good and reliable. But since TX has a citrus industry, they cant ship to TX, but unless VA is a citrus producing state, they can ship to you.

Lydia

Here is a link that might be useful: Four Winds Growers

Thanks for the link Lydia!!!! I really appreciate it!!

Bonnie

Lydia, they appear to be rather hardy trees. I have one in a pot. I'm not sure why, but mine was not happy this winter. I notice it dropping leaves and at one point noticed it only had a few leaves when I was watering the protected plants in the garage. Gave it a good drink anyway. By the time the weather warmed, I think I got down to one leaf. I don't remember if that leaf dropped and it was just bare branches -- I was ignoring it at that point, but it got watered with the other potted plants. I was preparing to dump the dead trunk and start over when it exploded! It looks good as ever now.