I am attaching another photo. I forgot to add that I am using a citrus tree fertilizer plus I have spread a big bag of Rooster Booster few months ago under the trees. The mandarine tree that I removed recently and replaced with a Navel Orange was inthe worst shape of all. The roots have not grown at all since being planted over a year ago.

Lemonade lemon tree

Any ideas? What would be my best course of action to rescue these trees? Use garden lime until the pH gets up to mid 6 or 7?

have you fertilized? seems to be a nitrogen deficiency.

use something with a high ratio of N.

I have fertilized quite a bit, plenty of chook manure (composted and pelletized) and slow release citrus fertilizer). I have another citrus that is in a pot and that one is doing great, plenty of growth and plenty of flowers using the same fertilizer.

What was your exact planting procedure and what kind of soil are they in now? What does the soil consist of?
Can you take a close up of the ground and put some soil in your hand and take a pic of that?

I'll defer this to the experts Rhizo and Patty two awesome helpers off the top of my head for planted trees!

I have a feeling your roots are suffering in many ways before they can even utilize the fertilizers.....
I wish you luck quickly and welcome to this forum..

Mike

Planting procedure consisted of digging a hole in the soil approx 0.5 meter wide and deep. At the depth of 0.5 meter I got to clay and stopped digging then. I have also added some clay breaking compound that i got at the garden centre. I have put couple of buckets of compost mixed with soil that i dug out, put in the citrus tree and filled in with compost and soil mixture. Watered in well to remove air pockets and watered again the next day. At that stage I have added about 100grams of slow release citrus fertiliser per sqm. I will take sokme photos of the soil tomorrow.

Photo of soil as requested

Different view, another handful of soil. Note that there is a fair bit of garden lime in it that I added yesterday. pH reading before adding garden lime was 5.

bit of perspective

from a distance

more

Well...I suppose the Spring and summer weather may bring it around. How cold was your Winter?

Josh

The trees were suffering long before winter, they started loosing colour and looking tired in mid summer ( around February this year) i have fertilised and watered them hoping they will improve. Winter wasn't particularly cold, and all neighbours have citrus, so unless small trees are more suseptible to cold I doubt that was an issue.

Too much moisture, perhaps? Does the soil ever dry out?

Josh

Hi Josh, I cant say with any certainity if the soil dries out at some depth, but top 10cm dry out quite easily. Could the damage be done by not enough watering or by it being too hot in the full sun against the fence? If so is that reversible? I am asking because last summer we went away for 3 weeks and it was really hot or the most of that time. Most of the yellowing started then and I assumed it to be sun damage. Since then however I was expecting some new growth. My potted lemon survived our holiday without much fuss (and no watering). Wheras the other trees that are planted in the soil have been struggling ever since.

It looks like how my grapefruit looked. Yellowing leaves and dropping them. After posting my issue on this forum, I found out that I was over watering. Since my soil is heavy clay, it would take about a week to dry up when I would deep watering. After so much of that it caught a disease, PhytophthoraAnd you might need some Agrifos. First let the soil dry out and then water it. I know winter is about to start or have started. Hope you see some results.

Here is my post

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/citrus/msg051130048614.html