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Kaffir lime arrived yesterday. Not looking so hot. Brown leaves.

M

Mumrik

I ordered two kaffir lime plants of different sizes. The shipping company took their sweet-ass time and instead of being on the road for a few days these plants spent two weeks in a cardboard box with no fresh air, water or light. The small one surprisingly looks like it doesn't care at all, but the larger one's leaves are hanging and some of them are brown. I watered it yesterday when I got it and hopefully didn't over do it.
I've looked around a bit on the net to figure out what's up here, but it doesn't really fit what I'm finding. Root rot sounds odd for a plant that has been so dry (unless they shipped a dying plant)...


Small plant looking fine:


Larger plant looking pretty poor:


Any advice on how I should treat this thing? Should I be repotting it? Picking off the brown leaves? Giving it a bit of water and playing the waiting game?
 
It just looks like they were in need of water and light, so I would just wait and see. You don't want to shock the plant any worse than it's already been through. The brown leaves will probably fall off on their own, but it looks like it could be saved. Even if the leaves fall off, as long as the stem is green it should still grow back eventually. Just water it sparingly until new growth appears if the leaves can't be saved.

Otherwise, I don't know who you ordered from, but you might want to check their policies and see if it's worth pursuing a refund.

Fortunately, Kaffir limes grow fast, so even if the small one is the only one that survives you should still have a nice plant in a year. I must have pruned a couple feet of growth off mine over the course of last year, and it's just barely 3 years old now... I have several containers of leaves in my freezer.
 
hot stuff said:
Maybe try a diluted fert and the above recommendations. Mine is treated horribly and it still does fine.
Click to expand...

Yep... one of our Indian students warned me that his plant back home grows like a weed. Mine was still putting out new growth in the middle of winter. Once they perk back up you shouldn't have many issues with them.
 
This thing is just losing all its leaves. None of them are recovering and the ones that looked okay to begin with went limp/soft, then got crunchy and are dropping.

Any reason to believe it'll start over with new leaves? I changed its soil and the roots look fine to me and the stem is still very green.
 
As long as the roots look okay and the stem is green it might recover. You might have just shocked them; when you order plant through the mail you usually need to give them a day or two to adjust to being out of the box, more depending on how long they were in shipping, which was a while in your case. How much light are they currently getting? If you suddenly put them under bright lights, that could've fried the leaves.

Otherwise, don't despair too much, just take it gradually and keep an eye on them. I think one of my citrus trees was shipped bareroot without any leaves, and it started putting out new growth in a couple weeks, but it will only do so once its condition has stabilized and it has acclimated to its surroundings. The more leaves fall off, the less often you'll need to water... citrus don't tolerate wet feet very well.

(And do not fertilize it anymore until it starts putting out new growth- you'll just run the risk of burning the roots and compounding the problem)
 
I put it in the window, but it also got some light from a desk lamp - it's spring here, but still rather dark and cold... Guess I might as well leave it in the window for a while.
 
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