Healthy leaves and flowers drop off Cara Cara Orange

This Cara Cara Orange was doing so well these past couple months. It started blooming profusely a few weeks ago but now all the healthy leaves, flowers and buds are falling off. It even looks like a few of the branches are dying. It has not been over watered or under watered. It is outside in a large pot. I have several other citrus in pots and so far they are all doing well. Could it have some sort of desease?

Another photo. Weather has fluctuated between 50 and 80 in the past week.

try upsizing the pot--where did you pick that up at? since we have to get all of our citrus in state....
Debbie

Epsoma has a citrus feed I use, less harsh (HD has it)
http://www.espoma.com/p_consumer/tones_citrus.html

I got it at a Houston Garden Center along with some other citrus trees a few months ago. Oddly enough I just fed it some some of that citrus tone last week also along with my other citrus plants. The pot is quite large that it is in so I don't think that is it. I'm thinking that maybe I let it dry out too much?? Would that cause this?

HGC huh, well I'll have to drop by this week--normally I avoid them--lol

Fancy, that dosen't look like a large enough pot to me--ease it out and see if its root-bound. They do need a lot more moisture when in smaller containers.

It basically looks green, perhaps its stressed from the wind and being dried out a bit.

What are you using to make this determination? The soil needs to remain moist. When the soil gets too dry the leaves will look a little dull. A citrus tree will drop leaves if the soil dries out too much or stays too wet.

I used to keep my 3' - 5' dwarf citrus trees in large pots — 24" and 30", but decided to plant them all in the ground even though I'm marginally in the citrus growing area. I was having two major problems: The drying winds and the hot Texas sun. The winds sucked the water out of the leaves faster than they could replace it and the hot Texas sun heated the soil too much damaging the fine citrus roots. I compounded the problem trying to keep the soil cool using water. I had them in light colored fiberglass pots. I had thought of shielding the pots against the sun, and allowing the sun to reach the tops, but decided just to put them in the ground.

I noticed you are using a black nursery pot. After you knock the tree out of the pot, as Debbie suggested, you might re-pot it into a white or light colored pot.

I do all my citrus in pots and don't have any problems at all; so its quite possible. I don't need to do it that way for winter temp's, they just perform better and take up a lot less space in large pots. It's a lot easier to control feeding and watering in container's. And I've been doing it this way for 16 years.

I purchased two other citrus trees at the same time and they are doing very well and tey all got they same watering and care. The pots they are 12" high by 12" wide. Bettydee, maybe you are right on the watering. I have watered it every day or every other day since and it seems to have stopped dying. They are in the pot temperarly as I am moving and plan on putting them in the ground in Oct.

I went by the HGC closest to me--no cara cara to be found, but I did make an impulsive Miho Satsuma purchase--the price was definitely right. I hope I don't live to regret it but they had so many different kind of citrus I just could not resist. The quality of about 3/4 of them definitely left something to be desired--looks like they got really mangled and lots of broken limbs in transit.

I know what you mean by the quality, dmj. I got mine when they first arrived about 6 weeks ago. Now there are not so great a choice. My next shopping trip with them will be in the fall when everything is 70% off. I've gotton lost of bargains this past fall and winter from them.

They had a really surprisingly wide selection of citrus--just a lot of things (as far as oranges go--they had about 7 varieties) I was unfamiliar with--probably older varieties. Limes about 3--none of which I wanted or didn't already have. Grapefruit's about 3-5 varieties; I've never thought about doing them in containers. Lemon's seems like they only had 2 varietie's I saw Meyer's (they didn't say improved on them) and one called lemon drop, I think.

I just remembered I should have looked to see if they had in blueberries, raspberries, or blackberries--I'll go back soon and check. Sometimes they don't have stuff like that at ours because its a surburban/urban location.

Do they still have any citrus left in the summer and fall when they mark stuff down? I figured they only get them in early spring.

I have to admit--I'm not a fan of HGC's; but if they have fruit no one else has, I will go. In fact, I probably only live about 2-3 miles from there and haven't been in over 2 years. But they had some HUGE clivia's over there for $16.99 (orange--no species name on them) which I will go back and pick one up (they looked really good too--in the shade area--had to pass through there to get to the citrus trees--lol) when I get some extra money or win the lottery or whine loud enough to some of my male friends that I will perish without one.
Debbie
=)
Debbie

Yes, they still have citrus when they do the 70% off sale. In fact they still have just about everthing. That's why I won't buy from them until the big sale.

Do either one of you know what citrus rootstock they use?

The Miho satsuma I got is not grafted--I don't go for grafted citrus myself--and made sure it wasn't. Things do a lot better for me on their own roots. But they had a lot that were grafted and that's why I didn't pay any attention to them and couldn't name the varieties. But they were all from Hine's Nursery in Tx so you could probably look on their website and find out, or email them Veronica.