Well, if you know me, you know I love any kind of plants. And if you know me, I love fields. This is a Meyer Lemon Tree. And believe it or not, I found this tree and a couple of others with this tree at the end of season at nursery at half a path. So I was thrilled.
Now, I have a few problems. You look over here, you can see the leaves are slightly yellow. This one really hasn’t come out like this one as you’re beginning to see more and more green here. So I have to give them a little tender love and care. Now that it’s winter, they are in the greenhouse, I have an opportunity to work on them and get them ready for the spring flush of growth. So what I’m going to do with this Meyer’s lemon is first, I’m going to do a little pruning. I’m going to start here with this part that is coming off. This part is called a sucker and it’s coming up just from the base of the lemon tree here. I want it to grow with a single trunk, so I’m going to take this little side shoot off simply by making a cut here just like that.
You see, what I’m looking for here is an overall round shape so you see this radical single limb coming off this way. I want to bring it more the realm of the shape of this tree. So, I’m just going to snip it off like that, and I do it just above a bud. Now the next thing that I’m going to cut will be the tips, every tip. And the reason I clip every tip on here is when I clip that tip, in the spring, it would flush out two stems. So you see where I’m going? I’m getting more limbs. With more limbs, I’ll get more fruits more than this. So all you do is just do this, do this and every one of them. It doesn’t hurt the tree, it just makes it better.
Now, this plant came with a single stalk, this little bamboo pole. I’m going to leave that. But if you buy one that has this little plastic wrapper, watch because it can cut into the stalk of the tree. So I’ll loosen these later in the growing season.
Okay. It has had a haircut. What I want to do is spray it down with a really safe product for fruit and vegetable plants. This is to make sure that we keep the insects off of it. Citrus trees can be prone to get melee bug and scale and spider mites. So what I’m doing is go over the entire tree making sure I get the underside of the leaves. Now I haven’t seen any on this particular plant. We’ve had some on some of the others in the past and I just want to make sure that none of the eggs hatch and get an infestation here. And I even like to soak the ground around the base just in case.
Now what I like about using a safe organic product in the greenhouse is that I’m in here working, there is not a lot of ventilation. But with this, I don’t have to worry about it. Now by next year when I bring these in, rather than one lemon, I want to have a dozen.
Follow these tips and you’ll have plenty of citrus. If you’d like more information on this topic or any other gardening topic, just check out my website PAllenSmith.com
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