Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Why I pruned my Meyer Lemon Tree.

Why I pruned my Meyer Lemon Tree.


I have been doing a lot of research on youtube and other places about pruning and shaping your trees. It looks like you can train your tree to form in a bush shape or a tree shape. Of course there are other ways of training it, but these are the two most common.

When I got my Meyer Lemon Tree it was very healthy with leafs and they were growing all over the place. After some inspection I found that some of the major branches were growing towards each other and many of the leafs were getting caught up with one another. At the time I didn't mind so much as long as the plant continued to grow, and it did. Soon I started seeing tiny buds growing and some new leafs developing.

Now, almost two months after I got my plant I am really starting to get concerned about the shape of my tree. I had two large branches coming out of the same spot and running parallel with each other. This meant that their little branches and leafs were also getting really congested. I know that these wouldn't grow much more as they were intertwined.

I did some research on Youtube and on other blogs and found that training them or pruning back unwanted branches would help the tree develop better and in an upward manner.

So this morning I took a closer look at my Meyer Lemon Tree and started cutting off a few tiny branches.

I feel like the plant now breathes better, has room to grow and will be able to focus its energy on the large buds that have developed.

Here are a few images.

My Meyer Lemon Tree after pruning.

My Meyer Lemon Tree after pruning
Its interesting, but now that I look at it from this angle that lower branch is too low to the ground. I am hoping to encourage this plant to grow upwards if possible. I will have to look at it again and see if the tree will do better without that very low hanging branch.

2 comments:

  1. Ah, I wished you had taken pictures of your tree before it had been pruned it would have helped a lot more with my judgement as an arborist, but it looks great!

    -Samudaworth Tree Service

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the nice comment. I will have to post a new photo on here so you can see how its doing now. I have a nice lemon growing and its dying to go outside. Also needs to be be repotted.

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