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My lemon tree is growing like crazyyyy!!!

10 years ago

Hi everyone,

I bought a lemon tree a month ago (4 years old - said the label). When I bought it had 10 fruits on it, looked all great. I harvested 2 of the fruits after 2 weeks, I don't know if it has anything to do with the growth of the tree but a few days after buds started appearing like crazy on the tree. I counted them & there's about 80 flower buds on it PLUS so many new shoots appeared & grow totally vertically! One thing is the tree seems a bit off balance, all of its fruits are on one side, there is only one main trunk kind of grew out on one side of the rootstock. So my questions are:

- I really would like the tree to produce some branches / fruits on the other side so it looks a bit more symmetrical and uniformed. What can I do to encourage such a growth?

- There were 8 new vertical shoots on top of the tree but 2 were crossing other shoots so I cut them off, now there are 5 of them growing like crazy (their leaves are much bigger than the leaves on the old branches). Do I have to prune them down? Their appearance doesn't really bother me, I'm just worry that the tree doesn't have enough energy to support all the flowers, fruits AND those vigorous new shoots. If I let them grow like that, can the tree set some new fruits still?

I kinda put some spreader in between them so that the are less vertical and hoping they won't block the lower branches from getting sunlight.

- Do I have to harvest the currently hanging fruits? I would like a few new lemon out of those 80 flowers and i'm worrying that the tree can't handle that much fruits on them. But I hear that there is only 2% of the flowers will become fruit at most so I'm worried that if i harvest the current fruits and there won't be much (if any) lemon on the tree after this growth spurt.

I live in the Netherlands where there's not much sunlight during winter but right now the tree is getting about 5-10 hours of sunlight daily depends on the sun :D , it is places next to a South facing window.

Any advices / information are much appreciated. And I'm really a newbie in this whole gardening thing so pls be as detailed as possible. Thanks!

The first pix is when I first bought it. No new shoots, only fruits.

2nd and 3rd pictures are how it is right now. The 3rd pix is its side view, you can see that all the fruits and branches are on its left while it's totally empty on its right.

I don't know how to upload more than 1 pix so I used an app to combine them, sorry for the low quality.

Comments (3)

puglvr1
10 years ago
Bingo, that is an amazing Lemon tree!! Huge lemons and a very pretty shade of yellow, very healthy!! The amount of blooms are exciting... I've never seen one that nice for sale in my area. Congrats!!

If the fruits are ripe...I would pick them or pick them as you need it, but I would think removing a few of them would be good for the tree...make room for the blooms that are there now? Just my opinion...

Where did you purchase it from?
BingoNL
Original Author
10 years ago
Hi Puglvr1,

Thanks for your message.

I don't think the fruits are fully ripe but I've already picked 2 off the tree (I also think it's better for the tree to bear new fruits). But hey, I'm a total newbie in this :s , I don't know if it's actually true. At least it looks healthy so I'm not worried, just hoping to change its shape a bit.

I bought it in Gamma here in Holland.
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blue72
10 years ago
I haver the sugar

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