Hey Dsieber: First off thank you and I am so happy you escaped another disaster. Boy, I have yet to see a storm like that, although I did almost witness a tornado a few weeks back. My friend lost her house completely and all her citrus trees:-( I am happy for you this time around:-) As for coffee grounds, They work short term, then after a short period of time can turn your mix into cement, clog it up,fill in all the porous spaces your roots are thriving from, throw off the perfect balance of your fertilizer, and then suffocate your roots, especially in winter. I have been there and done that along with many other friends. I have killed a many citrus tree and gardenias with this method. That is the experience I have had with them since I had all the access to coffee grinds when my the girl I dated worked at Dunkin Donuts. Now I use them for my compost pile and my garden, especially my roses as your Mom does, you mom is good and I bet her roses are beautiful. The worms come along for sure and also help with great looking flowers:-) If you should decide to use them, I hope they do well for your trees. Who knows, you may be an exception to the rule.:-) Have a great night and we shall catch up soon. It's back to Americas Got Talent! Mike

You guys will want to protect your trees from freezing temps, even in the garage. To do that, you can set your plant on the garage floor and cover it with a cardboard box when there is any danger of the tree experiencing killing low temps. You should be able to leave the garage door open all night (if you're forgetful) with that protection down to temps as low as 20-25* w/o killing or badly damaging the tree. Al

Hi all. I take care of a university biology department's collection of plants here in Connecticut and have grown citrus at home for over forty years. My take on the above issues follows. First, my Meyer lemons that get a good dose of cold before I move them inside (this year around Halloween) often drop many of their leaves and then soon break out into the same kind of flowering cycle seen on the second plant. They are more prone to dropping most of their leaves in November than any of the other citrus I care for. Next, when the tip of a branch begins to die back as in the photo, you should use a sharp pair of secateurs (sterilized in bleach solution) and prune it back to green wood just above a leaf node ASAP. Leaving the dying tip is only causing more tissue to die. Next, I think both the plant that shed all its leaves in a week and the one that consists of just a single stem are in pots that are much too large for them, especially given that they are in regular potting soil and seem to be in cool home environments without a great deal of sunlight. The single-stemmed plant would probably be quite happy in a five inch diameter pot. Over-potting makes the cooler conditions the plants encounter in the fall and indoors more likely to cause root rot which can kill a citrus tree quite quickly (I've done it to a couple of my own trees: they drowned). The test I'd do is to get them out of their pots and see if there are a decent number of roots spreading through most of the soil. If a plant that has been in a container for several months is lifted from the pot and when this is done large gobs of soil simply fall away, that's a good reason to put the plant into a smaller container. There's no good rule for this, but I'll note that most of my older citrus (15 to 30 years old) are in containers that are about 1/3 as high and 1/3 as wide as the plants. A typical example: I have a Key lime in an 11 inch wide and 10 inch tall pot (with soil to within three inches of the top and an inch of bark chips on top of that). The Key Lime has a 1 inch diameter trunk at the base and is roughly 2.5 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall. Soil considerations. At home, I long used regular brands of potting soil picked up at Home Depot (non-moisture control) with success for decades but then had a bad experience when I used a more expensive brand from a garden center that had too much ability to hold water--the bottom of two pots turned to mud. In the aftermath of that experience, I researched my options. For what it is worth, I've adopted the following mix at the greenhouse: 1/2 Al's Gritty Mix plus 1/2 ProMix BX. Al's Gritty Mix consists of three ingredients 1/3 Turface (the stuff used on baseball infields), 1/3 Grani-grit (rough granite chips for chickens to grind their food in their gizzards), and 1/3 fine bark mulch. I do not sift or sieve any of these things but simply pull out any overly large bits of wood from the bark mulch or mix if I see them. I found that Al's mix alone drained and dried out far too quickly in the greenhouse. You can obviously vary the amounts or omit one of the Al's ingredients and still have a much better mix than what you'll buy at Home Depot. A cactus might get 1/3 ProMix BX and 2/3s Al's, etc. I use the 1/2 and 1/2 mix for most succulents and cacti, including Desert Roses. Oh, and I've found that covering the soil surface with larger bark chips is a great way to reduce the fungus gnat population, but that problem is also helped by shifting to a mix that has less peat in it or by NOT repotting your plants just prior to bringing them in for the winter (the fungus gnats are particularly attracted to new potting soil with its fresh peat).

It has long ago been proven putting rocks in the bottom of a container is a bad idea. Doing so raises the perched water table higher into the container and the tree's root system As to your soil test results, the nitrogen should be high, the phosphorous should test rather low and the potassium should be high. Below I have posted a link showing citrus with a potassium deficiency. https://www.google.com/search?q=potassium+deficiency+citrus&rlz=1C1OKWM_enUS900US900&oq=potassium+deficiency+in+citrus+leaves&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0.27068j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-B AND https://www.yara.us/crop-nutrition/citrus/nutrient-deficiencies/potassium-deficiency-on-mandarin-citrus/