Lemon tree a bit pale?

[sandspider]

Hi folks

Attached, hopefully, is a pic of my lemon tree. A fairly recent purchase, some of the leaves have always looked a bit pale / yellowy, rather than the deep green I was expecting. I asked the seller and she said it would naturally lose a few leaves and this was normal. Since then the pale / yellow seems to be spreading. I've fed it a liquid feed a couple of times, which hasn't made a difference. I've topped up thr soil a bit, but not potted it on.

Should I pot it on? Feed it more? Water it less? Or is this normal and I can just leave it to it?

I water it a generous splash every couple of days, and it's in quite a hot kitchen.

Thanks.

[Plot70]

I have had citrus plants growing from seed for some years.
You can get special liquid feed and compost for them.
A few pips thrown into a pot of garden soil will produce what you have got there.
I have found that the best potted citrus come from rarely found pips from those small soft skinned oranges.
They bush out when they are still very small.

[ameno]

It probably does need repotting, but that won't be what's causing the yellowing.
Citrus prefer slightly acidic soil (although not as much as blueberries), so if you are watering it with hard tap water then it will eventually cause yellowing, as the calcium interferes with the absorption of iron.

Otherwise, it just needs more feeding. But you need to use the right feed. Citrus need quite a lot of iron, and also struggle to absorb nitrogen in ammonia form, preferring ureaic nitrogen. Specialist citrus feeds have both of these, but so also do most ericaceous feeds, so if you can't find or afford a citrus feed, an ericaceous one will do fine. Pelleted poultry manure also have a good quantity of nitrogen in ureaic form, but it's slow release, so you won't see results for a month or more, and it lacks iron.

[sandspider]

Thanks both

It's watered with soft tap water which has been allowed to stand. I will look into a specialist citrus or ericaceous feed and see if that greens it up a bit.