The Tropical Fruit Forum

My method of not drowning it is to withhold my love and neglect it often lol ..until I saw how badly the wind damaged it no love for Mr. Meyer unless winds reach 15+ mph

That's amazing Millet! I'd like to grow mine using the air root pruning method but with just one tree, I can't bring myself to risk it's survival when I'm not experienced enough with lemon health in general. I've read about the top foliage and below ground root balance and its importance on maintaining the balance. But would my trees top gangly exposed roots still count as a "below ground root structure"? Since they're actually above the true root flare which I'm assuming is the real root crown that is supposed to be slightly above the soil line. I've read a paper about an experiment done to observe root adaptation based on environmental differences in soils and it mentioned that cutting a portion of one of the thicker lateral fibrous roots induced growth of a new one. The study wasn't specifically tested on citrus but trees in general. As it is a very young tree, I'm invested in having my tree grow a stronger root system and I'm willing to hold out on bearing fruit until the roots are as tough as superman's fist.

Lemon trees are so pretty but I don't know anyone else that has a serious interest in growing fruit trees so I'm glad to be able to post my trees' photos Thank you Susanne as well for your advice. It's a huge relief to hear that it's probably not signs of disease like I feared but, ironically, just too much poking around from not knowing what a healthy lemon tree looks like.

I've read information that new leaves will darken over time but never found any time reference for how long it takes. So thank you again Millet! I'll definitely be watching for signs of darkening after several months. I think I will prune those exposed lateral roots as it is approx. 1/2" below an old prune cut. When it gets repotted, the soil might be too close to that cut Judging from all the other cuts on the tree, whoever did the pruning didn't do a very good job with the angle and distance of the cuts. I don't want to risk exposing the tree to fungal or bacterial invasion through a badly healed cut.

It's my wishful thinking to grow the lemon tree organically because I had majored in environmental science and that old background makes it hard to not want to grow sustainably using the soil food web. Since they're heavy feeders though I know it might not be possible. If I see that it begins to be detrimental to the tree and not possible to continue with an organic method, then I will switch over to the higher synthetic NPK values.

Has anyone had good results with growing their citrus trees using air root pruning? My trees' roots are likely damaged and I'm thinking air pruning might to be the best way to encourage deeper/vertical root growth rather than the vegetative growth that citrus seem to enjoy prioritizing.

Thank you all for the tips and advice! It really means a lot to me to see people willing help when I had no one else to turn to for advice or opinions. I will definitely be frequenting this forum more often.. probably through lurking

Here is the most recent full profile of the tree taken 11 days ago. Getting very crowded and chronically worried about powdery mildew lol

Thank you so much for commenting! Any information from someone more experienced is still valuable. I've tried posting on another forum yesterday and it still doesn't have comments on it yet, so thank you so much Citradia! I'll put more time into looking at the deeper roots when I check the tree tomorrow since it's already dark where I live.

The tree measures 21" tall from soil surface to tallest leaves. During the first or second week of purchasing the tree, I pulled the tree out to look at the roots and it didn't look root bound. In fact, I lost a lot of soil when I did that lol. It's currently growing outdoors where temperatures have not dropped below 65F yet but it has been going into the 80-90F range lately. It was so sensitive to the heat the first couple weeks that the new light green leaves kept standing upright and cupped inwards which I researched and determined to be the trees attempt at conserving water. So I moved it out of full sun to my front porch steps on the north side of the house where it gets direct sunlight part of the day without getting burned, hopefully.

I water it once every 4-5 days or when the top 2-3 inches of soil looks very dry and the leaves stopped standing upright/cupped inwards. However, there's always some kind of rain shower or rainstorm within 1-2 days of manual watering which I assumed would be ok bc I don't normally employ the 5-10 min deep watering... but maybe it's not okay? I usually stop watering immediately after I see it leak out the drainage holes and sometimes I come back hours later to water again to make sure the water is leaks out a second time due to soil saturation and not surface runoff.

I haven't checked the roots since a month ago so I'll take a gander down there on my next visit. One problem I was having before the old leaves started yellowing was stippling and raised bumps on my new leaves. I've seen a leafhopper on the tree before but only got to see it one time. The tree doesn't have an aphid infestation. There could be spider mites bc I can just barely see some almost invisible threads spun between leaves but not many. I've also seen a single strand of a lacewing egg under a leaf occasionally. But there has been some signs of small shiny stuff spots (honeydew?) and more stippling and scritch-scratching blemishes on some leaves which are still very light green but starting to show small splotches of very light green-yellow after I found those intense yellow markings.

Another note about my tree that might play into this is that I haven't pruned it since I bought it. It seems like the store owner also didn't prune the tree once receiving it from the nursery so it is very leafy right now and most of the new growth point upwards. I planned to prune it for an "open vase" shape but I've been researching to figure out if late summer or fall is a safe time to prune. Most of the drastic yellow marked leaves are in the bottom canopy where the leaves are a bit crowded and I noticed that they are growing next to another leaf! I don't know the terminology but it looks as if 2 leaves are sprouting from the same.. sprout location? I will post the photos I have so far. The most recent full tree shot I took was 10 days ago