Please Help.

I have several citrus trees that are struggling and I think it is because of Cicada Nymph in the potted plant dirt. I suspect this because the trees (mainly one) has been yellowing with deformed shriveling leaves since last year. I noticed exit wounds on the tree branches this summer and I believe that Cicada Nymphs have infested my pots and are eating at the root systems.

I need to know if there are any ways to drive these suckers out of my potted plants. The only other option I can think of is to re-pot them all, which I will do if necessary but I am not sure if I will be successful at removing them all from the dirt by hand.

Hi, those are not exit wounds. They are scars where adult females try to lay eggs.
The 17 year cicada we had this year went into the ground 17 years ago. I doubt they are in your pots.

This is just a thought and I have no idea if it will work. But as cicadas are insects and I assume the the nymphs have soft bodies, maybe an Insecticidal Soap drench will do it. Get some Insecticidal Soap concentrate - this is going to take a lot of IS. Mix it according to the directions on the package. Hopefully you have a tub big enough to hold the pot the tree is in - soak the entire pot up to the rim in IS until the soil is completely saturated. If you have nothing that large, mix some up and pour it into the pot, making sure to cover the entire surface area. Mix a couple bucket fulls and keep dumping to hopefully reach saturation in every corner of the sorl. Insecticidal Soap is a contact poison so the nymphs must be coated for it to work. No guarantees but this would be my approach.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00192AO90/

You could also use a systemic but that would make the entire plant poisonous to anything that eats any part of the plant for several months, including bees and you.

sallyg said:Hi, those are not exit wounds. They are scars where adult females try to lay eggs.
The 17 year cicada we had this year went into the ground 17 years ago. I doubt they are in your pots.

We came from here:
The thread "citrus tree problem" in Trees and Shrubs forum

And highlighs why its important to add to an original thread about the same plant instead of starting again. History!

I had a lot of those 'scars' where the cicadas laid their eggs. Lots of the leaves where the branches were scarred turned brown. What I did was cut them off before the eggs hatch and the larvae fall down to the soil underneath them. I just cut most of them off and put the branches in the garden waste bin. I doubt that I will experienced the next time Cicada X's coming to visit, but those brown branches look ugly, and the branches that I have pruned the dead leaves are sprouting new leaves and look a lot better although the plants are now about 1/2 the size before the previous prunings. When the larvae fall into the soil, they would search for food and eat the roots. So maybe it is a good idea to change the soil since the cicada eggs hatch between 6-8 weeks after they were laid. I am no expert in citrus trees, so I do not know how to change the soil of a potted citrus plant without killing it. I had success with the pruning those egg branches from roses, viburnums and young dogwood trees.