Miracle grow potting soil actually is not much more than a bag of peat moss. If regular potting soils are used they have be admended with wood chips, CHC, cedar chips, pine bark or other coarse material to help increas the draining and root zone aeration. I know growers that have used Maricle Grow's Garden Soil with success, still I would recomend adding coarse material to that. . If you pull your trees out I'm sure you will find that your tree's root system are in real trouble. With all the water that Miracle Grow Potting Mix holds, the trees's roots must be starved for oxygen. -S-

I have a feeling that your plant, as a new transplant, was not getting enough water. Sometimes when you put a new plant into the ground, the root ball is so tight it just doesn't get the water. So before you put a plant into the ground you should gently loosen the outer roots to encourage them to grow into the ground. Also, any time you do water, water DEEPLY until the roots get established. Chances are the plant will be able to root in some over the autumn and winter and will be okay in the Spring.

Definitely not a tree I'd be trying to grow in a pot. They just want to grow too big, too fast. They need very good drainage, and withstand droughts well, so yes, I'd be cautious about over-watering it. And like most Oz natives, very susceptible to death by phosphorous if you're fertilising it. I've never met an Acacia that liked being fertilised at all, and I've grown dozens of different species over decades. Yours appears to be dying/dead. A. baileyana (Cootamundra Wattle) is also a known environmental thug of native bushland, so if you must grow a wattle in a pot, why not choose a smaller species? I'd highly recommend A. cognata in your situation, but as there are more than 1000 species, a trip to a nursery with a good selection might be a good idea... Acacia cognata in pot

Hi all. I take care of a university biology department's collection of plants here in Connecticut and have grown citrus at home for over forty years. My take on the above issues follows. First, my Meyer lemons that get a good dose of cold before I move them inside (this year around Halloween) often drop many of their leaves and then soon break out into the same kind of flowering cycle seen on the second plant. They are more prone to dropping most of their leaves in November than any of the other citrus I care for. Next, when the tip of a branch begins to die back as in the photo, you should use a sharp pair of secateurs (sterilized in bleach solution) and prune it back to green wood just above a leaf node ASAP. Leaving the dying tip is only causing more tissue to die. Next, I think both the plant that shed all its leaves in a week and the one that consists of just a single stem are in pots that are much too large for them, especially given that they are in regular potting soil and seem to be in cool home environments without a great deal of sunlight. The single-stemmed plant would probably be quite happy in a five inch diameter pot. Over-potting makes the cooler conditions the plants encounter in the fall and indoors more likely to cause root rot which can kill a citrus tree quite quickly (I've done it to a couple of my own trees: they drowned). The test I'd do is to get them out of their pots and see if there are a decent number of roots spreading through most of the soil. If a plant that has been in a container for several months is lifted from the pot and when this is done large gobs of soil simply fall away, that's a good reason to put the plant into a smaller container. There's no good rule for this, but I'll note that most of my older citrus (15 to 30 years old) are in containers that are about 1/3 as high and 1/3 as wide as the plants. A typical example: I have a Key lime in an 11 inch wide and 10 inch tall pot (with soil to within three inches of the top and an inch of bark chips on top of that). The Key Lime has a 1 inch diameter trunk at the base and is roughly 2.5 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall. Soil considerations. At home, I long used regular brands of potting soil picked up at Home Depot (non-moisture control) with success for decades but then had a bad experience when I used a more expensive brand from a garden center that had too much ability to hold water--the bottom of two pots turned to mud. In the aftermath of that experience, I researched my options. For what it is worth, I've adopted the following mix at the greenhouse: 1/2 Al's Gritty Mix plus 1/2 ProMix BX. Al's Gritty Mix consists of three ingredients 1/3 Turface (the stuff used on baseball infields), 1/3 Grani-grit (rough granite chips for chickens to grind their food in their gizzards), and 1/3 fine bark mulch. I do not sift or sieve any of these things but simply pull out any overly large bits of wood from the bark mulch or mix if I see them. I found that Al's mix alone drained and dried out far too quickly in the greenhouse. You can obviously vary the amounts or omit one of the Al's ingredients and still have a much better mix than what you'll buy at Home Depot. A cactus might get 1/3 ProMix BX and 2/3s Al's, etc. I use the 1/2 and 1/2 mix for most succulents and cacti, including Desert Roses. Oh, and I've found that covering the soil surface with larger bark chips is a great way to reduce the fungus gnat population, but that problem is also helped by shifting to a mix that has less peat in it or by NOT repotting your plants just prior to bringing them in for the winter (the fungus gnats are particularly attracted to new potting soil with its fresh peat).