Before even investing in lemon trees, I read up for months on them and educated myself. I understand I have a lot to learn, and I suspect there will be nothing like experience to be my best teacher. When my nursery finally told me they were coming in, I felt I was ready enough to own one. In my case, four.

Someone suggested to me that in small, young trees that one should limit the amount of fruit it produces because it sucks energy from the trees growth. In as much as limiting it to one fruit per tree.

For some reason, this doesn't sound like a good idea to me. Just going with a logical way of thinking....if the tree is getting good sunlight, all the nutrients in needs via soil and leaves, and is growing normally, it doesn't seem like a good idea to interfere with Mother Nature and pick off buds that will become fruit, and limit a small tree to one fruit for the first year, as was suggested to me.

Unless this is something citrus growers regularly do. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Perhaps logical thinking is not the way to go. If it's a good thing to do for the tree, then of course I want to do it.

It is true. If you have a small tree, you have a choice to make. Either let the tree provide you fruit, at the expense of receiving the most foliage growth possible, or remove all the blooms so that your tree will produce more foliage growth. Additionally, the fruit produced by small 1-3 year old trees is rather inferior, so many growers prefer to let the tree produce all the growth possible. It is up to you. Take care. - Millet

All the small little green nodules, of what I assume will grow up to be lemons, I should remove, but for a few? That is, if I choose growth over crop.

I would choose growth, obviously, as the fruit produced by a young tree is bound to be insignificant in size.

You can manually remove the little fruitlets if you wish, but you certainly do not have to. The tree will automatically discard all the fruitlets that the tree is not capable of bringing to maturity. Only about 1 to 3 percent of the fruitlets will ever remain on the tree to become ripe fruit. About the fruit size, they will grow to be regular size fruit. - Millet

So, I really don't have to do anything then. Just give the tree plenty of sunshine and all the nutrients it needs and let it do its thing.

Thank you, Millet. You're a wealth-spring of information and a refreshing wash over us who are thirsty for knowledge about our trees.

I have a few 1 gallong bush like trees, they were loaded in fruit and flowers... I was happy to see this post as it made me realize that they should be kept fruitless. One of the lemons I just cant pull off though, so everything else is off. I've decided to not pull my grapefruits off as it must be an older tree... htere are so few that I'm going to see what it does.

I was all about the fruit with my last few trees this time though, I really need to do whats best for them and in the long run, it'll be best for me.

It really is hard to pull those cute little fruits off, but if its worth it... I'll keep doing it. Sure is hard because my meyer keeps putting out bloom after bloom... its like its putting out 6 blooms for every 1 I pick. Hmmm, maybe its trying to tell me to leave it alone! At this stage though, I just rather have leaf growth

My Sambo is five feet tall and I think is old enough to do its own thing, without me interfering. I could probably pull a few off, but not a whole lot.

The small Meyers and one Eureka though probably need my help. So basically, I should pull off the little fruitlets as they appear? This will encourage new growth? Am I understanding this right?

Yeah, it seems hard, but if its for the betterment of the tree, I'm all for it.

I pull the little baby fruit off right after the flower dies. I love the smell of the blooms. I dont think pulling off the flower buds early does much for helping them

Wow, 5 feet tall!!! I would love that. But for the most part, my trees are in a bush form rahter than the typical tree form, I think they'd be truly scarey if I let them get to 5ft tall! but, still a beautiful thought. Just if I lived where they could live INground. but, I still love the trees, just a shame they have to live inside

Pull off the little fruitlet, or the entire husk it's in (or does it matter)? I'm hoping the entire husk, because that what I just did to the smaller ones that had quite a few of them on them. There is one fairy good sized Meyer on one I'm going to leave.

I'm not sure it matters, but I pulled off the entire bud. I hate doing it, but I really want to maximize growth for now

I'm with you. I would much rather encourage the tree to put its energy into healthy growth while it's young. It does feel "wrong" to do, but I think it's the right thing.

I was thinking I have 3 lemon trees, I could leave one to nature and see what the difference is with them... but I'm picked a few off the one, its just in the process of putting out more blooms right now though... so, just might have to leave em.

Well, I have four and that includes the 5' Sambo. But the other three are small and I am going to only let get so big. Bushy is what I'm going for. As for the tall one, I'm glad we have tall ceilings, and I will only let it get so big also. It is nice to have it though.

I planted a Marisol Clementine Mandarin in my greenhouse on December 27, 2005. When I planted it, the tree was 28 inches tall and 9 inches wide. I have removed every bloom for the last 16 months, in an effort to achieve optimum growth. The tree produced it first growth (flush) on 1-17-06, the 2nd flush of growth on 3-22-06, 3rd flush on 6-10-06, 4th flush on 8-9-06, 5th flush on 10-21-06, 6th flush on 2-10-07 and the present growth flush started on 4-15-07. It is now 16 months since I planted the tree, and the tree has grown to it present size of 55 inches tall and 43 inches wide. It's foliage is very full and healthy. I will let the tree fruit perhaps next year. Had I let the tree fruit from the beginning it would still be a rather small sparsely foliaged tree. There is a picture of the tree on this forum when it was approximately one year old. - Millet