Hi everyone! I live in Colorado and have a key lime plant in a container. I'd really appreciate some input from people. I've asked stuff on another forum and the advice I got was ridiculously unhelpful, so I kept going doing my own research, but I was excited to find this place. If anyone has anything helpful, I would really, really appreciate it (if you're going to tell me I can't pot my container plant with a shovel full of soil from my backyard, please don't bother).
The basic story is this: I have a key lime plant, a few months ago, there was about a 2 week stretch of time when I didn't water it (I just forgot one weekend. :-/ ), a little while later, it started looking really sick, even after I watered it thoroughly. Watered it thoroughly again a few days later (probably about a week), and it was still looking sick. Fertilized it, all the leaves dropped, and the branches started dying back, fast. Looked around a LOT online, decided it was probably a mineral (especially zinc) deficiency, got some chelated iron/zinc/copper/magnesium and have been watering it with that since, and spraying it on its branches etcetera. When I did that, the branch dieback slowed dramatically, immediately. I even started getting some new growth! Now, a lot of the new growth started to die as well... :-/ But I did get two healthy looking leaves! And they stayed there until just recently they started to get really wrinkly (not discolored, really, just wrinkled), and yesterday one dropped off. Now there's the beginnings of two new leaves on that same bit of growth.
I'd really like to get my plant healthy again, so I'd appreciate any insight or helpful advice on what to do to 1) keep those new leaves there. 2) Try to keep the key lime plant alive long enough to start having some real regrowth of all the stuff that has died back.
Thanks everyone!