Beginner Gardening: Please, 0 by cecilechoi

cecilechoi wrote:
Hello,

I have a potted Mayer Lemon tree which is around 2 feet tall. I bought it about six months ago and since then, the tree has been doing very well. However about a month ago, I found scale all around the tree. I tried to get rid of the small insects, using organic spray, but this didn't seem to help. I read somewhere that alcohol kills them, so I soaked alcohol on cotton swaps and killed scale one by one. This did kill most of them off, but many of the leaves fell, and the tree has only one leaf left. I tried to fertilize the tree by giving "Citrus-tone," which created a lot of seemingly fruit flies. I sprayed horticultural oil to the soil, and it seemed to kill many of the fruit flies.

More worrisome thing is that now the branches have started to turn brown. The scale has gone, but the brown is spreading to most branches. I have tried to cut back some of the dead wood, but I don't think that would stop the browning process.

Please someone help. The tree has turned from a healthy specimen to a bald twig. Can the tree be saved? What did I do wrong?