Wednesday, August 3, 2011

What's ailing my lemons?

I have to say, my lemons are never quite well, though they're very resilient. And in particular, Hope gets this thing where leaves will dry and/or turn yellow, starting from the tip, then the whole leaf, then if falls off. And some of the branch tips were turning yellow too. I cut them back a few times; usually that's enough, but one branch keeps progressing.

Hmmmm...

Whatever it is, it can't be contagious, because it would have been all over both trees by now, whereas it's just three branch tips on Hope and one tiny bit on one branch on Faith. And it's not deadly, because they're not dead. Nonetheless, I got concerned, so I googled it.

So. Either it's a horrible bacterial disease and they're both gonna die, which doesn't seem probable. Or, they're getting too much water and/or too little nitrogen.

I knew that.

I knew they're getting too much water because when leaves dry out I water. It works on everything else, why not lemons? So even though I can see that the soil is wet, I water them because the leaves are dry. And I knew about the nitrogen because even the good leaves are not very green. But to give them nitrogen I have to mix the fertilizer with... water, so it makes their water problem even worse.

One solution would be a citrus fertilizer, but not surprisingly, I've never seen any in this town. Not too many citruses up here.

The other solution is manure.

Yay! Manure!

I actually own a bag of manure. I paid good money in exchange for cow dung in a bag. Yes I did.

I have no use for manure in my garden right now, or so I thought. The reason I bought it is that I'm going to use it in the fall (I'll tell you all about it then) and if I wait until then, the stores might not have it in stock. So I bought it early. But now I have an excuse to use manure! Yay!

First I'm gonna wait till the soil dries out a little. Or a lot. Because you still need to add some water when applying manure, if I understand, and there is already too much water. Then I will add manure. Hopefully before the plants have to come inside, because I'm not really excited about cow manure in the house. It may be lots of fun outside, but I like my home dung-free. So hopefully it can be applied outside and settle in before having to come into the house.

Gardening totally messes with your head in some ways.

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