Poorly Kumquat

God evening folks, I have a kumquat that lives outside in the warmer months and then in a south facing, cool room during the winter months. At the beginning of the year I noticed the tell tall tiny webbing that told me spider mites, I gave the plant a shower every couple of days and did my best to wipe as many off as I could, there are no longer any signs and it is now outside, it has developed very mottled leaves and has also started dropping leaves, is this due to the spider mites and will it recover? Any advice appreciated.

 

It looks very much like spider mites, that mottling is something I've seen a lot.
If you are sure the mites have gone it will recover, but I'd be very surprised if there were not a few still lurking, putting it outside will slow them down, but not kill them.

The leaves are dropping because they are damaged or some will be just normal leaf drop.

 

Thanks for your replies, I've bought another spider mite which preys on the red one, hopefully this gets rid, it's one thing after another, I had to hard prune my lemon due to scale but thankfully it's gone and the lemon is coming back.

 

The peditors work best inside as you probably know.
The other thing is that they never totally wipe out their prey, the peditors either move on or die out themselves before that happens.

I have tried them some years ago but you needed to buy 3 or 4 lots during the growing season just to keep the numbers down.

 

I found the natural predators very effective, both for RSM and greenfly. In fact, the parasitic wasps did such a good job of clearing up greenfly in the conservatory that they migrated outside and gave control for several years!
Do you feed the kumquat, DL? I'd give it a healthy dose of Miracle-Gro to help it put on new leaves

 

Hi, I have specific feed, both winter and summer for my citrus plants but I've recently started to use miracle grow, it's the green crystal looking stuff, I'm also giving it to my calamondin that is not doing very well, last year all my citrus flowered and produced fruit but this year they were hit by pests indoors, we have lots of hover flies and parasitic wasps so hopefully they should help

 

It was a dreadful year last year for woolly scale and leaf miners on citrus. We can only be vigilant and try to stop infestations before they get out of control I've found Miracle-Gro to be excellent, far better than 'dedicated' citrus tree fertilisers.
Over here, we are inundated with paper wasps which, although a real nuisance to humans, prey on most insect pests. So...I leave them alone to clear up scale, aphids etc., then zap them before they start getting aggressive in the heat
I'm also trying out pheromone traps for scale and leaf miners....will keep you posted on how effective they are!

 

Our winter was awful, I thought my olive tree had fallen out with me for good, my sago palm isn't doing well and I lost 2 really nice cordyline that were wrapped in fleece etc.

 

Just a little update, the kumquat has started to put out some shoots, happy days.

 

I had a fair few kumquats year before last, couldn't really work out what to do with them, compost heap turned out to be the best option.

 

I was about to cut it back like I did with my lemon and calemondin, it's done them a world of good also made finally getting rid of scale easier

 

My lenon tree now

 

That looks healthy, any fruit forming.
I assume you call it John?