EasyBloom Forum

I purchased this Blood Orange tree about a month ago in about a 2 gal. Container, Had plans to transplant later to a much larger pot and soil the store recommended. Plant is about 5’ tall in its container. Tree produced lots of blossoms and green leaves. I watered it about every 3 to 4 days as it said on the tag that came with the plant. However about 1 to 1-½ weeks ago it got very windy and blew every blossom and half the leaves away in less than an hour. I placed it in a protected area until the wind died down. I resumed watering but to no avail. I decided to trans plant it to a large container and watered it hoping it would help. It still looses leaves (about ten left). I have been using the easy bloom also during this time and started to rely on it even more, however it keeps saying that it is too wet… I haven’t watered it since the transplant (about 1 ½ weeks). The soil is dryer than it was straight out of the bag. What can be the problem? I have reset easy bloom in monitoring mode multiple times with the same results (too wet). I have been using the setting for navel orange because there is no reference to blood orange in the database. Can this one be added? Please help. More plants to follow. Thank Dave

Hey Dave, I will definitely add the blood orange to the backlog of plants to add. I'm sorry to hear about the tragedy your blood orange went through. As for when the EasyBloom says that it is too wet, you have to keep in mind that this is referring to the drainage of the soil over a long period of time and not the soil moisture at that point in time. Your soil may not drain well or you watered a lot when your orange was recovering from the windy session. You should also note that EasyBloom may perceive that the drainage is poor because your orange unfortunately lost its leaves and is not removing as much water from the soil as it once did. As for repotting it after it suffered the wind damage, that may have added to the stress on the plant. It is generally very difficult to repot a plant without damaging the roots in some way or another. Also with the recent damage to the stems and leaves, it may continue to drop leaves for a bit. I do not think that this would kill your orange tree however. You should keep in mind that with fewer leaves and possibly fewer roots from the recent transplant, your orange will not be sucking up as much water as it did and you may have to decrease the frequency of irrigation. You definitely did the right thing by moving the orange to a more protected spot, and in the future you may just have to keep an eye out for that. My advice would be put it back into a full sun position and be sure that the soil dries a good amount before you water again. I just checked the watering parameters for the orange you were using to monitor, and it will be fairly dry before it recommends another irrigation. This is a great discussion and I hope I haven't been too long-winded. If you have any more questions, by all means ask away on these forums. That's what I'm here for. Happy Gardening!!! --Robby