I bought two Meyer Lemons and they both have multiple branching at or near the ground level. Is this normal? I reaaly don't mind leaving it like this as I prefer a lower growing tree. Will this work?

Darkman, I think Meyer does prefer to make a bush if grown as rooted cutting. You may train it as a single trunk if you want but they do just fine as bushes. Let the experts confirm or correct this.

How is your farm project coming alone?

Good luck!

Could be suckers off the rootstock Charles. If so, you need to clip them off. You should be able to see the graft on new trees.

Randy

The two bottom branches on my in ground Meyer Lemon are about 8 inches above the soil's surface. The tree is a young two year old tree. You have PLENTY of time to remove any bottom branches, that might need removal in the future. It is the lower branches on a tree, that nature uses to build strong trunks. Much of the energy created by the lower branches goes primarily to develop the trunk. A healthy trunk will have a taper like a fine fishing rod. I try to leave bottom branches on all of my trees for as long as reasonably possible. Normally if they need removal, I try to wait at least until the second year of growth. Bottom branches are especially important on young seedling trees just starting out. It is always a mistake to quickly remove them. - Millet (660-)

Thanks Millet,

They will stay for now and I'll get a better look at them.

Thanks WD40,

I don't think they are suckers since I think the Meyer is on it's on rootstock.

Darkman,

Your project is very impressive! Good luck with it!! Thank you for posting update.

Meyer are most commonly rooted as they do fine on their own roots & root very easy. I have one in front of my house that produces hundreds of fruit every year.

I p

WD40

Thanks for the pictures. It gave me some perspective on the size of a mature tree.

Thanks WD40, great photos. Here are some photos of my mature Meyer (probably 5 or 6 years old). When we bought our home in September 2009, most of the citrus were in pretty rough shape. The Meyer was recognizable only because it had a fair amount of lemons on it, and the owners remembered what it was. All the others were almost denuded, bark chewed, branches chewed off, gopher damage, and bad CLM leaf damage. Here's the Meyer today. Just a little TLC was all it took here in my area, with is the "land of lemons and oranges". It is about 10' tall as well, and the trunk is about 6-8" in diameter. You can see the graft close to the ground (probably need to clear some of the dirt away from the graft, and my gardeners moved my drip up against the trunk I see, that will get moved):







And, here is the unknown citrus right next to it. This poor little tree was in such bad shape, the previous owners offered to cut it down. I told them to just let me try to salvage it. It was just sticks. And gopher damage to the roots and trunk. They thought it was a goner. Unfortunately, they left some weird metal stake in the ground, and I'm pretty sure the trunk has grown around it. I tried pulling it out, and can't budge it. I'm going to dig down gently and look more closely to see if I can safely pull it out. Today, it is just covered with blossoms this season and has huge amounts of new leaf flush. I'll be trimming the dead wood shortly, now that I've figured out what survived and what is truly dead. I figured it was a lemon or a lime due to the thorns. Now that it has some fruit on it, I'm wondering if it might be a lime - maybe a Key lime - since the fruit is so round and really hard. Thought it was another Meyer, but the fruit is too small and round. It, too is grafted, and you can see the healed ground squirrel damage to the graft. I scratched the skin of one of the fruits gently, and to me it smells a little more "limey" than my Eureka and my Meyer. If anyone wants to venture a guess, that would be great:

I have a huge meyer lemon tree 10 feet tall, 15 feet wide and 10 years old. I have harvested over 6000 meyer lemons from it since it was planted 10 years ago. There is a bird nesting in this tree now and hate to disturb it.

They