What do they need?

How much water?

How much pruning?

 

Well, I'm not a huge citrus expert, but how are you growing them? In a container? Inside or outside? Where did you get the lemon tree? I've been growing citrus in North Carolina (in containers in a greenhouse) and have had success growing them, but have never been able to get them to fruit. The ones I've been growing I have started from seed, but if you bought yours it would be a different story.

 

Mine is a well-established, good-sized tree in my backyard. Over the last few seasons, it has been capable of supplying an abundance of fruit without much help from me. Then, we had a frost, which I think affected it. Now, we have a drought.

It was getting too big this summer, so I hacked away at it (I know nothing of proper pruning) and now it isn't doing much. But I haven't been watering it too much, either. Much of the fruit on the branches is soft and mushy inside and never ripens. The sun burns it black and it dies on the branch and falls off. Some of it goes the other way: it stays hard and never ripens.

I think this thing just needs the proper amount of water and light pruning and it will be fine. But I don't know how to do that yet.

 

Well, frost and drought will hurt any plants--esp if they are susceptible to it. The key is to prune the dead stuff off so that the dead wood doesn't turn into a site for infection--many fungi use dead tissue as a site for infection in trees, and minimizing this tissue is good for the health of the plant.

Giving pruning technique on trees on the internet is tough advice. Generally speaking, you want to always make cuts that go back to the next largest branch. In otherwords, don't hack off half of a branch--cut it back completely to the part of the tree that it developed from (the next largest branch or trunk). Always make cuts in 45 degree angles such that the cut faces away from the tree--never make a straight cut. Make sure that you cut branches cleanly off with sharp pruners/loppers. Never make cuts that are into the collar of the trunk--I'm not sure how to illustrate with out showing pictures, but this gives a good idea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Collarless_union.JPG

Also, never top a tree. Many unexperienced people top trees--this does a lot of harm to the tree and should never be done unless you are trying to keep the tree from growing into a power line. Trees are unable to heal properly when they are topped and this provides a site for infection.

I would highly recommend that you get a good book on pruning trees--something specific to fruit/citrus trees would be a good resource for you. Ball Publishing would be a good place to start--especially since they decided to stop publishing books and you can probably find some good deals on their website at the moment. I can do some looking for a good title, just haven't had to do any fruit tree pruning.

 

Thanks, Rick. Good info. I sort of knew some of it already. When I pruned, I wasn't cutting dead wood. I was trimming to reduce size of tree.

I'll think about those books . . . but I am super busy and really very lazy. I will try, tho.

Love your music. Keep the funk going. Peace.