This satsuma tree was planted last spring and was healthy until a month or two ago when the leaves started turning yellow. Now the yellow is changing to a brownish color and little black spots are forming.
The other satsuma that I planted last spring is doing fine...it is different cultivar though.
Imanerd
I don’t believe that I have seen this before but it looks like fungus or powdery mildew. Does it show up on the stems, branches or trunk?
I sure would start with a good fungicide.
Oldude
Any luck w/ the fungicide? I had a kumquat that was yellowing really bad and I fed it with some fertilizer and it greened up. Is it possible that it's in a low lying area that gets alot of water?
No fungicide...and no low lying area...
A local expert (Gestalt Gardener - http://www.mpbonline.org/radio/programs/GestaltGardener/) told me that the ends were dead and that the best course of action was to prune away the bad parts and hope for the best in spring.
I think that I let it get a little too cold.
How cold did it get? My satsumas are good till 25 degrees after that your pressing your luck. Depends how many hours of cold they got too. Since the others are fine I don't really think that's the problem. I would cut off the dead parts and get them away from the tree. Do you mulch right up against the tree?
No, I leave a few inches between the trunk and mulch. However, I did mound dirt around the graft but that was after the problem started.
The reason that I was thinking cold was because it was perfectly healthy until late fall. I'm not sure how cold it got but I know that we didn't have a hard freeze until last week. The other satsuma may have survived because it has a natural windbreak and is planted on the side of a small slope.
I was interested in cold-hardy citrus myself and what I've read is that satsuma is usually cold-hardy to 15°F if dormant....some go lower than that. That might work where I live...on rare occasion it might get into the teens because I live in the hills. There are citrus that are supposed to go into single digits, but I'd have to order them by mail, I think.
I've read that about Satsumas as well but I'm not so sure that mine were dormant before the first cold spell. Our weather is so erratic that the dormancy thing may be tricky...but I do know that they are grown here.
