Pruning a lemon meyer tree??

Question

i live in florida and bought a lemon meyer tree 3 months ago and its about 5 ft tall. i dont know much about lemon trees but whatever i am doing, something must be right because my tree is yeilding fruit and has several flowers. So my question is: Is is ok to have a cluster of lemons right together? i read somewhere that fruit should be six inches apart. so i'm concerned that if i let them fully ripen the lemons wont be good. and on my tree i have two clusters. i'm afraid if i picked them off it may stunt the growth somehow. Should i pick them now? and also should i wait to prune the tree after its done producing fruit? and any other advice is welcomed. and are there any good webistes or books?

Answer 1

Meyer Lemon Trees are encouraged to bear lots of large fruits, pruning trees to develop a strong branch system capable of withstanding the annual load of ripe fruit is also critical. Prune Lemon trees to allow ample sunlight to reach into the middle of the tree, otherwise fruits will not ripen properly and will lack good color. That can mean removing many more lateral branches and stems than might make the most pleasing-looking, bushy plant. Such pruning also allows for good air circulation through the crown, and that prevents disease. A citrus tree allowed to bear all the fruit it sets in the spring will produce scads of poor quality fruit, or it will produce well only every other year. For consistently good crops you must thin clusters of young fruit to a single fruit. Do this when the fruit is still small (marble to golf-ball size). Each fruit should be six inches or more from its neighbor. Such thorough fruit thinning is time consuming, but you will appreciate the effort when Harvest arrives. I hope this has helped. there are sites you can go to to learn more about them....take care