I have 2 Meyer lemon trees that I planted last year. Each is about 30 inches high and has lots of small lemons (grape size). How many of these lemons should I leave on the tree if I want to get usable size lemons. I understand that the tree can only support so many lemons and if I don't thin out the fruit I will get lots of "cute" but useless lemons. One of the trees had 7 good size lemons when I purchased it last year but it has grown several inches since then .

Relocating from the North East USA to Carmel, California is quite a move. Carmel is an extremely beautiful location, and in my estimation a VERY pleasant place to live. Clint Eastwood was a past mayor of Carmel. About your lemon tree question. A lemon tree will retain only the number of fruit that it is capable of bringing to maturity, and will drop all the rest. Maybe more important for you, is the fact that a lemon draws all of the energy that it requires to grow into a nice full size fruit only from the closest 3-4 leaves to the fruit. Therefore, if you desire size, rather than quantity, you can thin the crop to one lemon for every 3 leaves, this will give you the largest size fruit that your tree is capable of producing. - Millet (456-)