Hi all
I've got a Kaffir Lime tree which I've had for about 4 months now and it's dropped most of it's leaves. I had one before for a few years (I'd beaten scale bugs and got it into good shape before my sister forgot to water it for 3 months when I went away so it died
) and it struggled a bit in winter but I gather this is a bit normal. I've read this thread
http://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=15424.msg199268#msg199268 especially the post by Millet, which is very helpful.
So my new tree is in the UK, I kept it in a small greenhouse over summer but it got really quite warm on a few occasions. It seemed to be doing OK but looked liked it was suffering a bit in the heat and dropped a few leaves but not many. Toward the end of summer after this we had a cold snap for a few days and I left it outside. It then, over the course of a few days, lost most of it's leaves.
I then repotted it into a larger container and used new compost (just standard compost) and brought it indoors. I've bought some red/blue grow lights and it now seems OK but there is no new leaf growth. It has flowered quite a lot since I brought it indoors and it now has about 15-20 small fruit sprouting, one of them is about the size of a table tennis ball. I feed it with a winter citrus soluble food once a forthnight and water it about twice a week. I don't water it loads, maybe 0.5 litre per go. The plant is about 2ft tall.
Apart from the leaf drop, my main question is should I prune it? Only a few branches now have leaves but only at the ends. I'm thinking maybe I should remove the fruit as they could be a drain on resource and you don't need them anyway.
I have a photo and have made it my profile pic.
Any help greatly appreciated.