What is the best way to prune a lemon tree to maintain best fruit output?
If you prune your citrus trees, and that includes lemons, you will tremendously reduce fruit production. It is a big NO NO NO to prune citrus trees unless you have other more important reasons than fruit production. It is very much unlike the deciduous fruit trees. The flowering buds are near the tips of the branches and if you prune off, it is like you reset them to zero every time and you produce no fruits. You can prune once in a while, but to achieve fruiting at the same time, you alternate the pruning of branches each year. That is, you leave some branches untouched while you shorten the others and do the reverse next year. This way you get consistent production and maintain the size of your trees. Another alternative is to thin out the tree by removing whole limbs coming from the main trunk. But the best method is only for the advanced citrus hobbyists, that is you will have to do a bark inversion operation. Bark inversion keeps your trees small, productive and fruits bigger with
