Not everything is fun and games when it comes to growing tropical trees.
If you are like us, particularly growing tropical trees in climates they are not suited for (in containers), it is a constant battle to provide the right conditions in the less-than-ideal environment to allow the trees to thrive.
The tree that has been giving us the biggest headaches since acquiring it was none other than our Mauritius lychee tree. This one is particularly sensitive to, well, everything, and we unknowingly overfertilized it when we potted it after purchasing.
The leaves began to dry out, fall off, and we were marching quickly to an untimely tree death.
So in this one, we thought we'd share a bit more about fertilizer burn, what signs we had on our lychee that indicated the problem, and what we tried to turn the tree around.
Note: In this article we are addressing fertilizer burn on lychee trees as this was something we personally experienced. However, all plants are susceptible to fertilizer/salt burn in some capacity- lychee is simply more prone to it than most and the one we have personal experience in. So while the solution in this article could apply to other plants, we caution that other issues could be at play here. Likewise, fertilizer burn (and other similar issues) can result in tree death if not rectified in a reasonable period. We do not guarantee that the following advice can save your tree, but are simply sharing the process that we followed when we identified fertilizer burn on our own lychee. Proceed with caution.
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