Whether you thin the crop or not, your tree will produce about the same amount of fruit in total pounds. If you decide not to thin your tree, the tree will produce a higher number of fruit, but each fruit will be smaller in size. If you reduce the number of fruit through thinning, your tree will of course produce less fruit, but larger fruit. Below is a thread that I posted on this forum last year.
------------ "Each fruit that a citrus tree produces, and retains until maturity, (Meyer Lemons included), draws all of its nutrition (energy) from the three to five closest leaves. Normally a Meyer Lemon blooms in clusters, with one of the blooms in the cluster becoming the biggest and dominant bloom. I select the dominant bloom, and pinch off all the remaining smaller blooms in that cluster of flowers. I do this to each flower cluster for each three to five leaf area of the tree. Therefore, each fruit becomes larger, juicier, and more large fruit are retained by the tree. This is because each fruit is receiving energy from its own set of leaves, and is therefore not competing with other fruit on the tree. This still does not protect 100 percent of the fruit remaining on the tree, but it works very well in obtaining high quality fruit, and many more of them. This also gives a more balanced tree, especially on smaller container trees------------"
Millet (989-)
