Hello,
I have been growing a lemon plant from seed for 2 years now. It is approximately 18-20 inches in hieght. The base of "Lulu" (my lemon plant) is getting thicker but the top is still rather thin. I am wondering if I should be pruning my lemon so that its width starts filling out and the stem becomes stronger or if I should just leave it alone.

I keep "Lulu" indoors for the winter and outside all summer.

I am also wondering when a lemon plant starts to flower?

Any information that you have would be great!

Thank-you

You can pinch the growing tip out to encourage branching--many people do this at a height of about 24 inches.

It will be several more years before your seedling blooms--probably 5-7 more years. However, if you can get mature budwood to graft with, you may be able to get fruit in a couple more years.

Other than pinching the growing tip to encourage branching, do not prune your tree as that will ultimatley prolong of even prevent it from blooming.

what is the diffrence between pinching new growth and pruning? I want to keep my trees small so how will this effect fruiting and flowering?

Pinching would be the removal of the very tip of a branch or shoot and can be done by hand. This encourages lateral shoots or branches to develop. Pruning would remove a larger portion of your tree and would reduce it in size and keep it from maturing and producing flowers.

Dylan is correct, but just to add to that, a seedling will not flower until the terminal leaves on each branch have reached a certain node count ( the number of leaves that have been produced in a direct line from that tip all the way back to the roots.) If you continuously prune the tree it will never reach the required node count.

Now, you can graft a piece of mature wood onto the tree and you may be able to get blooms on that with much less growth.

All my trees all bearing fruit now. I want to keep them small and on some of them I want to cut them back a little because they are getting to big. If I prune them how will that effect future fruiting? Or if I pinch of new growth and only allow them to grow out and not up how will that effect fruiting?

If scions/graftwood/budwood are taken from a mature producing tree the tree that they are grafted to will normally produce fruit in 2 or 3 years. Seedling trees normally take several years before producing fruit. Some can take as long as 12 to 15 years. Early production is one of the main reasons for grafting or budding.