Lemon and Lime tree in dier need of help!!!

I have a lime and a Meyer Lemon tree that have recently taken turns for the worst.

The background:

We received the trees June 2013 as gifts and they were both roughly 4 ft tall without any fruit at the time. We put them in a south facing exterior room in our house and watered about a quart/week or 1.5 weeks. The trees did ok, the entire time through this story the lime tree was never as strong or leafy as the lemon FWIW. Both trees would produce tiny fruits which shortly turned from green to black and would drop off. After a few months we realized we had spider mites and sprayed the trees every few days for several weeks until they were gone. Once the mites went away the trees noticeably started to do better i.e. new leaves/flowers etc. After a while they tapered off and were dropping leaves here and there and not really growing or producing new leaves/flowers. This went on until approximately Christmas at which point I noticed them doing particularly poor and thought perhaps they need more light and warmer condition i.e. an interior room with temps this winter being extremely cold. Around this past October we added half a spike of Vigoro's Citrus, Nut Tree Fertilizer spikes about 4 inches from the tiny trunk and about 1 inch under the soil and tried to water 'over' it.

The present and recent past:

After moving the trees to the family room with a fair amount of windows and sunlight (north facing) I added 2 ~75 watt flourescent bulbs right in between the trees at the same height as the bulk of leaves. We also added an inch or two of fresh MiracleGrow Cactus/Citrus potting soil to the top of our planters. Within two weeks the trees were doing remarkably better! New leaves, branches and flowers were growing so quickly. The Lime tree was slightly behind as it had few leaves when we moved the trees so it lagged for a month or so before beginning to produce new leaves at a decent pace. The meyer lemon tree did have 4 small lime sized (green) lemons at the time of moving which ripened to small, completely yellow lemons which tasted great! We picked the lemons about one per week until picking the last one the other day. We have been watering about a half a quart per tree (slightly less for the weaker lime tree) every 5 days or so until feeling for dry soil then watering the same amount again.

One day (about 2 weeks ago), I watered about a half quart to the lime tree whose leaves were starting to droop. The next morning I came downstairs to about 15 of it's 20-some bright green leaves on the floor. Since then all leaves have dropped and every branch has experienced full die back. In addition the lemon tree has now started to show yellow leaves. I have since added another half of fertilizer spike but more leaves have are turning yellow overnight.

HELLLLLLLLPPPPP!!!!!! We are at wit's end and so upset about our trees that we cannot seem to keep happy or even alive at this point. I fear we are positively going to lose the lime tree, it looks awful. Please tell us home we can save and better care for our trees from here on.

Meyer Lemon Tree:

http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z113/pearljam118/EB16EE96-ED70-4E59-B7CF-2573F748621E_zps7hlwbaql.jpg
http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z113/pearljam118/1EAC3DC3-2DC0-46D3-B056-2551E789B649_zpsptj3evk1.jpg
http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z113/pearljam118/8FC95BF4-2049-484B-8B7E-3ED8AAEE1913_zpsylnnpf2v.jpg
http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z113/pearljam118/D3D2D68A-2350-4D7D-9D20-87B431B58BD4_zpslr3mirb4.jpg
http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z113/pearljam118/8B7DCCFB-6A41-41BB-B03E-239791843951_zpsuunmeik7.jpg

Lime Tree:
http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z113/pearljam118/8F5E09F4-9F6C-49F7-8353-8CAA19895E93_zpsxiwcvmzu.jpg
http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z113/pearljam118/24B76D8A-5639-4E2D-8035-A42E3EAE11F1_zpsutbwe9lp.jpg
http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z113/pearljam118/CE4D1CC1-2A9E-4E57-9F64-87051B1BA9C7_zpsvqyuqoz9.jpg
http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z113/pearljam118/A29663CB-0C21-4D83-88A0-AEFF534D7742_zpsvl9hpliv.jpg

Thanks,
Greg

 

What a great forum!.......

 

See this page regarding overwatering: What Causes Lemon Leaves To Drop Off – Causes Of Lemon Leaf Problems