[Arid_gardener] Question from Home-Hort WWW page

[Dick Gross]

Ann, your two trees may be beyond the point of recovery--reading into your 
email, but there may be two problems at play here. First, trees like people 
and all living things have a normal, expected life span that genetics, 
environmental factors and the quality of the culture they recieve can 
lengthen or shorten. If your trees are near the end of their expected span, 
there is not much you can do but make them as comfortable as possible with 
proper feeding, deep irrigation and prudent pruning to prolong their demise.

But, there is a point at which you have to mercifully let them go and plant 
something new.

If, however, they are just suffering from malnourishment and thirst, you may 
be able to revive them with proper feeding and deep watering. If you can 
revive them, their appearance may be compromised by previous trauma but new 
growth with clever sculpting might make them interesting landscape specimens 
worth the rescue efforts.

The leaf condition on the citrus sounds like thrip damage that, to the best 
of my knowledge, is a phenomenon that we can do little to control but a 
healthy tree will, I think, outgrow the damage. My own citrus trees have 
suffered through it but 30 years later show little evidence of the insect. 
Insects and pathogens readily attack sick and weak plants but rarely, in my 
limited experience, get a fatal foothold on healthy plants.

Dick Gross, Master Gardener Volunteer
U of A MCCE

---- Original Message ----- 
From: <annyn at aol.com>
To: <arid_gardener at Ag.arizona.edu>
Sent: Monday, October 23, 2006 8:55 AM
Subject: [Arid_gardener] Question from Home-Hort WWW page


> Ann
> 85719
> annyn at aol.com
>
> I am new to the low desert and have a mesquite tree with a branch from teh 
> trunk that is dead and another branch dying.
>
> Also, I have an orange tree that is dying.  I sprayed it with an insect 
> spray.  Several branhes have died and the leaves are dying and have brown 
> spots and specs on the back (which i thought indicated bugs0
>
>
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