I can only tell you from my own experience and hope that it relates and helps. Your Valencia is looking good and I believe will be back to normal soon. [see below] Go real easy on the feeding and when you do feed, keep the fertilizer well away from the trunk. I'd also suggest moving the soaker hose much further away from the trunk.

First of all, the Meyer and Valencia may be on different rootstock and so that may explain their different condition. They may have reacted to or tolerated something very differently.

I have a Redblush and Sanguinelli looking very much like yours; that is, they are just beginning to bloom and with minimal and yellow leaves. They are probably a few weeks behind yours.My Valencia looks far worse, just new "nubs" trying to push out of the green bark. It still has about a dozen yellow leaves.

I hear that this massive bloom may be the initial stage of recovery after a drought and or stress. All three mentioned above endured 3-4 moves as landscape plans changed over the last two years. However, these three were in a somewhat similar decline exactly a year ago (yellow, dry looking leaves and tips) but had turned worse. I did not realize that i was over-feeding until July. I stopping the feeding and began flushing the soil with copious amounts of water regularly. This seemed to stabilize them. They have stood in a coma until a few weeks ago when again began growing (they had been regrowing the roots i had burned by over-feeding i guess).

My Lisbon did a major leaf drop and leafless bloom after a transplant; that is, just blooms no new leaves. [It was in its location for 5 years so i did have to cut the roots significantly to move it.] Fast forward 10 months and its pushing lots of leaves and all systems normal. There is plenty of nutrition in my soil and i am not feeding anything until i get evidence otherwize.

I believe that root damage is the cause of my woes, and in my case it was too much fertilzer, and perhaps applied too close to the trunk! I hope this helps and good luck!

sandiegodude, I suspect this may be due to two things - transplant shock certainly, but also we had a wicked week in January this year, with temps consistently in the mid-20's to very low 30's (depending on where you are exactly in SD county) for 5 days in a row. I would say you're seeing cold shock as well. Watch for branch dieback as well, not unexpected. Prune away any dead wood right to where it is still green. Once fruit sets on this tree, pull it all off to allow the tree to recover this season. Excessive fruit set after stress is a normal occurence. This is the tree's way of "surviving", by pushing out fruit as a last ditch effort to create a future generation. Your Meyer is much more cold tolerant than your Valencia orange. Continue fertilizing 3 to 4 times a year with a good quality citrus fertilizer that contains both macros and micros.

Patty S.

Strange, here in northern calif. I did not get any leaf drop due to the cold snap. [Most of January was frosty and we had 3 solid weeks where the night lows dipped to the mid / low twenties]. Leaf browning and wilting yes, but no drop. I am just getting around to removing the cold damaged leaves now.

Tahitian Pummelo suffered the worst damage by far. Followed by MeyerLemon, then Lisbon Lemon. The oranges, grapefruits, kumquats, and mandarins suffered little to no damage.

I am getting some leaf drop now that the new growth is beginning. Could this be a normal event where the tree is replacing old leaves?