Some more loving for the cytrus trees

As you can see below, the tangerine tree by the house has been looking sadder and sadder with lots of yellow leaves, including one major yellow streak right in the top-middle of the canopy and another one in the left-hand side. All this yellow seems to be an iron deficiency.

We started by removing the mulch and then we applied the following to the tangerine tree.

• Greenall F.S.T. (Iron and Sulfur), which contains 19% Sulfur, 33% Iron, 0.50% Manganese and 0.50% Zinc.
  
  The instructions advise to give 1pound per inch of tree trunk diameter so we gave about 6 pounds.
  
  I mixed the F.S.T. in a 3 gallon bucket of water and pored it under the canopy. I tried to focus on the the drip line, but the cement pathway leaves very little area under the canopy exposed, so I ended up spreading it under most of the canopy. Not sure if the water helped. Perhaps.

• Dr. Earth Organic 9™ Fruit Tree Fertilizer 7-4-2. A blend of feather meal, fish bone meal, cottonseed meal, kelp meal, alfalfa meal, soft rock phosphate, mined potassium sulfate, seaweed extract and Pro-Biotic seven strains of beneficial soil microbes plus Ecto and Endo mycorrhizae. It contains 7% Nitrogen, 4% Phosphoric Acid, 2% soluble potash, 5.3% Calcium, 2.22% Sulfur.
  
  The instructions advise to give one cup per inch of tree trunk diameter, so we gave it 6 cups. I removed the mulch, watered under the canopy, and sprinkled the fertilizer on the soil.

An additional problem that all our cytrus trees are showing is some curly leaves. It's not yet too bad, but we don't want it to get worst.

We washed the canopy of the three cytrus trees with the following:

• Spinosad from Captain Jack's Deadbug Brew. As you can see from the picture, it comes in a bottle that you attach directly to the hose, which makes it very convenient to apply.
  
  We had this bottle for a while and there was about 200ml left in it. We applied all of it to the cytrus tree by the house.
  
  We tried to spray the tree from the outside and also from the inside and below. The idea is to reach both sides of all leaves. We stopped when the whole tree was pretty soaked, which took the whole 200ml. We were pretty soaked too.

• For the other two trees, we used spinosad from Monterey Garden. This bottle has no hose attachement, so we dumped it into the Captain Jack's bottle and used it to hose-spray the trees.
  
  We used about 400ml for the two remaining trees. Again, trying to reach the two sides of all the leaves.
  
  We started by spraying from the outside and then from the inside. We would have stayed a little dryer if we had not entered the canopy to spray from the inside AFTER having sprayed the tree from the outside. Oh well...

Hopefully all this work will pay off. The tangerine tree by the house will loose its yellow streaks and the curly leaves will uncurl.

Nematodes

Upon finding termites in Rui's sandbox, we decided to spread some Nematodes in our yard. We suspect that the termited may be living in the roots of the tree that used to exist in this area.

We ordered Nematodes at Terra Sol on Sunday Aug 29, 2010 and they arrived on Tue Aug 31, 2010 (pretty fast). The Nematodes came from a company called Tip Top Bio-Control. The packaged is supposed to contain 5 million Nematodes (in a sponge), which should cover 2000-3000sqf. We decided to cover a little less: 1500sqf.

I got some instructions from the web that suggested using non-chlorinated water to make the Nematode "solution." So we left 3 gallons of water standing on a bucket for a couple of days to allow the chlorine to "gas off." Tue Sep 2, 2010 was the big day.

In the early evening (about 5pm) we started soaking all the areas where we wanted to apply the Nematodes:

• all around the house
• in the area where the sandbox used to be (basically the whole back/left corner of the backyard)
• along the new back fence
• along the (old) fence by the Juniper's

We tried to leave about 1-2in of water uniformly wherever we were going to release the Nematodes.

When all the "pre-soaking" was done, I squeezed out the sponge thoroughly into the 3 gallon bucket and figured out how much area I would cover with a full watering can (about 15sqf). This would mean 100 watering cans to cover 1500sqf -- that's a lot of watering cans. Since I had 3 gallons of Nematode "solution," each watering can should get about 3gallons/100 = 1/2 cup.

It took me many hours to get this done and, at places, I used a larger concentration of Nematodes just to go over the solution quicker. However, I don't think I ever used more than twice my original goal.

After all the Nematodes were released I went back and "post-soaked" all the areas where Nematodes had been applied.

It was past 11pm when I finished. Most of the time I was using an LED light in my head to see what was going on. By the end was I totally wet and probably full of Nematodes. Next time: NO WATERING CAN. It will be done with a hose applicator.

Now we just have to wait and see. Perhaps in a few months we'll bury some pieces of wood and see if the termites are still there.