Lemon Tree help

[Samd1]

Hi,

I recently returned home from 3 months away, I had some friends watering my plants but when I came home my lemon tree had lost most of its leaves from the middle section.

If I cut the main trunk in half, can I propagate the top half essentaly making two smaller trees.

 

[Chuck]

No. Cuttings are taken from new wood. All you will accomplish by cutting the tree in half will be to make the plant into a bushier plant. Your plant will come back. What I would do in your situation is try to force the plant into leafing out. I would snip off about 4 inches of the top tips of the plant. This will force new growth into the lower portions of the plant. The next step is to CAUSE new growth. Get a product called Super Thrive and use as directed. This product is an auxin and it chemically promotes new growth in plants. It really does work, not only for promoting new growth but other things as well. Next, fertilize the tree. It is starving. Notice how the leaves are yellow with green veins. If some of the leaves are old and some are new that are showing this it is a general lack of nutrients. If it were just the older leaves affected it would be cured by using magnesium sulfate (Epsom Salts). Or if it were just the new leaves it would be an iron deficiency and you would use an iron chelate or liquid seaweed. But it appears to be both so feed the plant with a good organic fertilizer. This will not be a quick fix.

 

[Samd1]

Ok thank you, my olive tree also didn't do to well. The top half was dead, I've cut all the dead stuff away and hoping the bottom will survive

 

[Samd1]

It's never been inside. Has full sun for the first half of the day. Was doing well before I went away for 3 months and had friends looking after it. I'll keep feeding it over the next few weeks and see if there's a change.

 

[Julian777ju]

You never want to propagate a lemon tree cutting. I tried it for one it's not that simple takes a lot of maintenance. For two it will grow so so slow unlike a tree from a seed is lot more vigorous. A clone will take so long even after, it develops roots. From my experience, an just water an prune just a bit like the other member mentioned. It will send signals to the lower roots to send shoots up. An you should see some new shoots in time. Just keep up with your watering. An be patient I got a dwarf lemon tree. That got bull dozed died and still came back haha. I still water it an it used to be a good size bush. Now its really small but has a lot of roots underneath. It's doing so much better now. After, I moved back into my new home. So, yours should be ok no worries pal.