Well, we need a lot more information... where do you live, container or inground... if the later, what is the quality/pH of the soil... age and size of the plants...photos?
Help us and we can help you....

In general citrus need about 2% Magnesium and Calcium; and 1% Iron and Zinc.

Inner city Cincinnati ohio, the tree in in a pot. extremely porous fast draining soil from rotted leaf, potting soil, sand of varying sizes and angular as well as round and crushed bricks with particles from an 1/8 in to 1/3 inch. Initial problem--my timer stop working and the tree got about a week of 24/7 light, A bad spring , drop it once and 3 snagged the main trunk and whipped snapped it, and last got it too close to the light and burned off the top 1/4 of it. Very rough going out side for summer. Cooler than usual summer. not as much sun. We have had 10 days above 83 F so far. We both lost our careers in the 2008 crash so we are very strapped and grow most of our fruits and veggies from seed collections. Pictures should do the rest.

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MEIWA SEED GROWN AT ITS PRIME. above picture is low resolution.

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NOW

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SECTIONS SHOWING NEW GROWTH

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CLOSE UP OF MEIWA TOP

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meiwa in large container, nagami in smaller container sweet lee tangerines in bottomless gallon food tin, to left sweet lee and sickly nagami

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side aeration hole and bottom holes 1/8 inch dia. About 500 in larger pot and 400 in smaller pot. This pic of drain holes is low resolution.

If you click on any picture you can see the picture in photobucket. click on the magnifying glass in the lower right hand corner to get access to an 8 meg pic. Click on the magnifying glass on it, lower right hand corner to expand it for good clarity.

Thanks for responding

forgot to say, I am foliar feeding my trees with fish emulsion fertilizer at 3x strength to get a 15-3-3 npk feeding 3 time a day. I also have 0-0-60 muriate of potash, but have been told that the chlorine would be hard on the tree. can I mix it with water and let the chlorine dissipate. Last I planted 3 watermelon plants in a lower section of the meiwa pot to use up the extra water since the tree has no leaves of moisture dissipating power yet.

The link below is not important but shows the life of my tree

Here is a link that might be useful: https://plus.google.com/photos/111099372377958308731/albums/profile?banner=pwa

Steve,
Assuming you are using the homemade soil mix you've posted on many times, there is no telling what micro and macro nutrients are already in your mix. It may be helpful to send a soil sample out for testing first (there are many major universities that do this for a small fee, for example there are labs at Cornell University, University of Massachusetts, University of Wisconsin, etc...) Since you get some of your mix from sand and other debris off of the street, I would also be concerned about the possibility of trace heavy metals (some of which could be toxic) in your mix. It looks like the U of Wisconsin's soil lab will test for heavy metals (Google for Wisconsin Soil Testing Laboratories). Other labs probably will also test for this too.

Having said that, given the two choices of fertilizer you present, I would probably go with the Vigero, the NPK ratios are more reasonable and it has a more complete list of micros. You homemade containers should drain well, so any unused fertilizer salts (i.e. if the NPK ratios in the fertilizer are a bit off from ideal and not all of the macro nutrients are used by your tree) should be easily flushed out of your containers during heavy spring/summer rains or other deep waterings.

Steve, I would not use any of the muriate of potash (i.e. potassium chloride) on your trees. Citrus are known to be sensitive to high chloride levels. You can't mix the potassium chloride with water and wait for the chloride to dissipate. Potassium chloride is an ionic species and the chloride ions will not dissipate no matter how long you wait.

Cheers

thank John and scott

The soil was tested for heavy metal and found to be very safe. The soil is devoid of nutrients NPK as well as micros. It simply is a space for which the root spread out nicely to be fed as an in medea hydroponic plant solid enough to hold the tree up. The sand is washed and very clean and the bricks are around 200 years old and probably are quit clean in nature. I got so busy this spring I stopped making my vinegar and roofing nails that worked well but not up to par. I will stick with the vigero and keep the blueberry bushes real close to let my kumquat tree know. I MEAN BUSINESS.

Steve

If you are quite serious about these things, you do a leaf analysis, not a soil analysis. The soil analysis only tells you what is in the soil, not what the plant has been able to absorb. For me I don't do soil or leaf analysis; I only put what I know the tree needs every year to produce the lemons it produces. I am quite sure that some of the fertilizer and some of the chelated minerals I put every year are superfluous; but for me they are insurance policies.

If I understand you right, I take some leaves off the tree and have them analysed to see if the nutrients are getting to the plant, I can then add the nutrients to the feeding regime to take care of any shortcomings.

My rooftop garden is about 100% composted leaves I have collected from bags place out for curbside collection in the fall over the last 20 years. approximately 10,000 bags at a post rotted dry weight near 50,000 pounds. Those are devoid of adequate nutrients.

if the leaf bags were collected at the road side, i think there might be a lot of unwanted chemicals like pesticide and herbicides in it.
at one time i was thinking the same and collect the bags but decided not to because of hidden chemicals.
if the leafs are coming from black walnut or oak there might be too much tannin in it too.

Susanne

Our area trees are predominantly oak. next come maple,,ash, hickory, chinese elm, cottonwood and some black walnut. I separate my walnut leaves and mulch my cherry and peach trees. I never thought about for citrus trees.

I failed to ask on this thread that since citrus likes acid and the rain water coming from my rooftop garden is tannin in color, should I be using this instead of my chlorinated tap water

Thanks for that line of thought

Steve

Steve, I must say for someone whom seems to make growing citrus a pain in the but..., your seedlings are looking real nice. Some of your posts just make my head spin, especially late in teh day when I can hardly think these days..lol

As for me, I just let a good ole fertilizer that has all that citrus need in it do all the guess work for me. So easy!

Mike:-)

This post was edited by meyermike_1micha on Wed, Jun 26, 13 at 19:28

Mike, I think you got the idea. My meiwa is leafing out very slowly but with good color. One of the nagami came down with rot around the collar. My 4 sweetlee trees are really pushing forward now I have to realize that I have to be patient and accept that my meiwa will not keep up with my hardy chicago fig with 11 fig at 8 months of age.

Thanks for the compliment

Steve

Yes, I agree with Mike, there are a few general, and relatively simple things (such as using a balanced fertilizer w/ the necessary micros, a well draining non-compacting potting mix, and semi-regular flushing of the containers w/ excess water to minimize build up of salts and excess unused fertilizer components) that eliminate or minimize any number of common problems with growing container citrus. This removes a lot of the guesswork, gives more time to enjoy your trees, and makes trouble-shooting easier when you do eventually have problems.

I also agree, it is quite interesting to see all that you have been able to do with what are essentially "found objects" (the containers, soil mixes, homemade light boxes, etc...). It is definitely cool to see that this can be done! Although, I'm not so sure that your little hair dryer heater setup does much to help growth of the seedlings... In addition, if you want fruit anytime soon, I would probably just get some small grafted trees (I don't recall you may have done this already). In the long run, this should save significant time and money.

Cheers

I agree with you on the hairdryer. I used it indoors when there is no moisture load on the leaves or wind to move air around the base to aerate the root. As soon as the trees went outside they were on their own as air goes.

The Sweet lee trees are already doing better, one nagami has "Rot around the collar" and will die when it finds out. My good nagami is just starting to respond. my meiwa is moving a little faster.

Thank for the compliments While these picture are old hat for you experts I hope they are helpful to newer forum member. One oldster complained with implied hisses an sighs. another expressed dislike in a polite writing. I hope I have not bother others.

Well in defense of the others you probably didn't need to repost all of your pictures so often. A simple link to the pics or other relevant threads, similar to what you've been doing recently is more than adequate.

Cheers and best of luck with your trees.

Well... to be honest, I haven't said anything but truly, what you're doing when you post in someone's message thread with all your photos again, and doing so multiple times is actually called "hijacking a thread". I think the suggestions that have been given to you are more in line with this forum - if you have a topic, start thread and use that thread to update your info, instead of hijacking everyone else's message threads with repeated postings of your photos and your "story". If you look back at the messages in this and other GW forums, you will not see folks doing this. Now, they might share a photo or two, for comparison or education, but to continually post ALL those photos over and over and over again, is getting a little exhausting. Frankly, I'm avoiding certain message threads because of this. Not really the forum etiquette. But, I'm glad you've asked for some feedback, as it will help you to understand better how the GW forums run, and what's considered appropriate and what is not. I'm glad your trees are doing well, and you've developed a system that is working for you. But maybe better to keep that to your personal thread, and update on occasion, so we can see the progress. Does that make sense?

Patty S.

Yes, that makes a lot of sense..I hope you understand how kindly Patty put it Steve. I too feel exactly the same way.

If you continually post updates and recent pics to your own threads on your same trees, I would probably have a peek.
By the way, thanks for understanding and being appreciative about it.

Mike

Thanks all;

I'll stick to picture posting on my own thread and my photo sharing sites. From there I can do thorough write up of what and why for people to view from a link should they chose to click. This will save a lot of reading space and I can show other ideas that might help but are somewhat off topic.

I have two thread. This one, which I will update periodically and the link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/citrus/msg0320572518736.html

My best poncirus trifoliata really greened up and grew like a weed and had to be transplanted. I did this today. I lost about 20% of the roots and after trimming off the crossing and redundant limbs 50% of the canopy was removed.

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This is my 18.5 month old PT

The other trees have also exploded but can not be photograph in a visible way.

Steve

now that Meiwa has gone in side and lives under a 23 watt 5300K light bulb the leaves are showing nutrient problems.

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I will try adding sum vinegar to my feed solution

However my sweet lees tangerine trees look great

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#1 Sweetlee from seed

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#2 sweetlee

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#3 sweetlee

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#4 sweetlee at 35 inches

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#4 sweetlee setting new branches