Navel Orange Tree update!

Here is my orange tree again! I got this little fellow last year about this time. So I have had this fancy little tree for just about a year now, and I have documented most of the things that have gone wrong with it. It has had a lack of iron/zinc resulting in yellowing leaves, and then the support bamboo pole snaped so it had to support itself. Well now we have another probem! I found HOLES in a few of the leaves! What a terrible sight!

As you can see it looks like something chewed its way through this leaf.

Really this is not that bad. The leaf itself will survive and the tree as a whole will not suffer.

I put the better picture up on top, these are kinda fuzzy and focusing on the pot below. But you can still get different angles, which are nice.

My guess as to what made these holes is that it's one of a few different insects. My first guess is a Carpenter Bee. These guys are great, and do not harm your plants very much. Actually they do more good then bad because they pollinate even during light rain. My second guess is a bird, for it's nest or something, then the third is a caterpillar, but because I did not see any such thing on my tree I think I'm safe... for now!

The thing that makes me most happy is that I might actually get a couple pieces of fruit off this fancy little tree this year! Above right picture is three of about 15 oranges that seem as though they may develop into full on oranges!

The pictures above you can see the leaves are almost fully recovered from that little bout with the coffee I applied. and the leaves are mostly only yellow towards the tips of the tree. It's still in recovery, but well on its way to becoming full on healthy! Next week I will add some Fruit Tree Fertilizer.

Thanks for reading everybody! Come back next time to see how my fancy orange tree is doing!

I'm sure you are all well aware that the only "gardening" I do at home is with my single tree. It is held up in a 15 gallon plastic pot in potting soil. I try to take good care of my fancy little Navel Orange tree. Bu as things go I went a little overboard and added some stuff to the soil that I should not have. (mainly coffee grounds, the ph of coffee is anywhere from 5.9-6.2 MOST citrus like about 6.5-6.8 ph) This lowered the soil PH to a point that rendered the iron in the soil to be inaccessible to my favorite little tree. Thus it could not produce the needed chloroplast to produce healthy GREEN leaves. In a previous blog I showed pictures of what the leaves looked like when I first started to try and fix the problem. to compare those pictures click Orange Tree Trouble 1   .

My tree is doing much better then before. The leaves are getting darker, and it's even putting out flowers, which with any luck will turn into my first years orange crop! click the link to my other blog post to compare the leaves from 1.5 weeks ago to now.

All I did was run water through the soil for a good 2 hours. This washed the soil and leached out all the extra coffee and anything else that might have been effecting my tree. THEN as an extra precaution I added some Liquinox

This Stuff is liquid Iron/Zinc . It's in a form that is easily accessible to plant, and tastes great!(not for human consumption) . All you do is pour 4 TBS into 1 GAL of water, and pour onto the soil which contains your plant. then water in thoroughly.

So, tune in next time to see the update on either my tree, or how the full on garden at my sisters house is doing.

As Always, Thx for the readz guys!