We recently moved into an apartment and found a Meyer Lemon tree in the backyard being completely smothered by a creeping vine (Morning Glory perhaps). It's only about 4 feet tall, but don't know if it's a dwarf variety, or simply that it was struggling underneath the vines. The building is about 8 years old, so we assume that's the age of the tree. Anyway, it took two loads of a 50 gallon garden waste barrel to clear all the vines. The yard is in much better shape now, but we are uncertain how to care for the tree. It doesn't have any dying branches, and does have many buds (too many?), but very few ever reach maturity. One lemon has been on there for over two months without fully ripening! Browsing this forum we see a lot of discussion that it's generally not good to trim citrus trees, but I wonder if it's a good idea to "reboot" this one with a good pruning, especially some of the branches that have been pulled nearly to the ground by the vines. And how about pruning some of the buds to conserve the plants energy? Any other tips on fertilization, composting, appropriate watering, etc.? We live in San Francisco, so mild climate with dry summers.
with fertilizing it it will start to grow on its own. its in flower mode so you may not see much growth for a little while. the plant will thin out its fruit on its own usually the only reason to thin a trees fruit is if it is a new plant that you just planted so you may take off all but a few of the fruit to let the plant grow. or like with grapefruits if there is an acceptianally large crop the fruit will be smaller so you could thin the fruit when they are small so the fruit that is left will be larger. and triming the tree you will loose any of the fruit off those branches you can trim citrus to keep it to a certain size or keep limbs off the ground but again you will loose fruit for that year. as for fetilizing a general rule is every three months with a good citrus fertilizer with micro nutrients. i know with container citrus they say in adition to use water soluable fert and how often will vary from person to person but most say a diluted amount like half strength some do it every watering some every other and so on. not sure if its recomended to do that with in ground citrus or not. wich reminds me i need to go buy some more fert its been a while since i have fert them and they are starting to show it a little bit. i am no expert but it gives you a start
