What is the age and rootstock of your Meyer? Some of my mature trees produce 15 lemons on a pencil sized branch.
Citrus are in general self thinning, i.e., they drop what the tree will not support. Meyers are another thing; left alone they will produce so many fruits that the tree will not grow; so if you want the tree to be bigger, you have to cut off a lot of the fruit. I have 8,000 Meyers... all in the ground; so if you post pictures and give us some details about age/rootstock, etc, you will find experts here who can give you step by step advice.

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It is living in a south facing unheated (insulated) mostly glass room and loving it. I am north of Phila, so outside is usually not an option. As fat as root stock, I have no idea. I bought it on clearance at Lowe's last August

Alexa

Wow!.. What you are doing, keep doing it. For sure, if you bought it at Lowes, it is on Flying Dragon (dwarf) rootstock; and probably is Four Winds tree.
I would take off all but maybe 10-15 fruits, so that you can enjoy the experience of the harvest and the tree will have a chance to grow.

If you have ANY problems,post fotos and descriptions here and someone will advise you what to do BEFORE the problem gets worse. Meanwhile, keep doing what you are doing, the plant looks soooooo happy.

Likely most of the fruit will drop of its own accord.

your tree looks healthy, but is still young and all the branches are very limber, and will quickly be weighed down by too many fruit.

as the others have said, it will drop some of the fruits by itself. right now i would recommend thinning it down to about 3 per branch, once they get larger, you can see how the branches are holding up and maybe thin it down to one fruit per branch. judgement call on your part. your tree can support quite a few fruit, but it may not support the weight of too many fruit.

Thanks so much for all the advice and comments on my little tree, we both appreciate it! I also got a Limequat the same day and it is doing really well too, so I guess I have the right environment in that room for them. Needless to say the palm next to the lemon is not as happy, but that is because it got left outside one night and suffered a little cold damage.

Thanks again for everything and I will be back with questions!

Alexa

Should I remove most of the buds too? That long leader is producing bud clusters in almost every leaf node and if I am not goint to let it produce all the fruit, should I remove the bud clusters so it puts more energy into growing?

Thanks Again!

Alexa

Good idea to thin the buds before it makes too many fruits; it is a waste of the plant's energy to make flowers that you are just going to cut off later. The altenative is to leave all the buds until they fall off so as to enjoy the incredible fragrance; just takes a little more food, but indoors the reward probably justifies the relatively small energy cost to the plant. If you take off all the buds, you will get a growth flush which is good. For me I would try to strike a happy balance.

Caliloo, what type of pot do you have your Meyer lemon in? Looks like a terra cotta pot or resin pot, but I can't tell for sure.

Your Meyer lemon looks incredibly health. Congrats.

Jerry

Hey Jerry!

IT is a resin pot that I picked up at a thrift store. And thanks for the nice comment - I'm glad my little tree is doing well :-)

Alexa

Meyers have extremely flexible branches. When the harvest starts, my trees look like weeping willows because the weight of the fruit bears them down. By May when production ends and all the fruit is picked, the branches grow outwards/upwards again.

I too LOVE that pot!

You can never have too much by the way, unless of course they start taking up the room in your bed!lol

Mike

Thanks jkom and Mike. And Mike - if I start finding them in my bed, I have more to worry about then citrus fruit! LOLOLOL!

Thanks for the laugh!

Alexa

Too many times I have thinned blossoms only to have the tree rebloom. Maybe even three times. Now I wait till the fruit is 3/8" to 1/2" and thin once.

I agree with allowing Mother Nature to do the job.

Your Meyer's will keep the correct amount of fruit it's capable of supporting.

When plants of all types grow in the wild, no one is around to prune, fertilize, etc, yet greens go on w/o the aid of human hands. Let it be, Toni

Mother Nature did not create the Meyer Lemon; and it doesn't grow in the wild; it grows only with the regular care of humans. If you leave the Meyer to itself, without thinning, it will produce all the lemons it can support...let's say 50... the next year it will produce 50 and the following years 50; and in 5 years it will still produce 50 and still be the same size it is today.

Great post guys!
I got my first meyer lemon tree about 4 weeks ago and its doing ok. I do have something eating small holes in the leafs. Still trying to see how to get rid of the bug. someone suggested a little bit of bear in a small cup or some cooking oil.
But aside from the chewing there are new leafs growing and a lot of buds popping up. As one of you mentioned on here I might take off a few of the "extra" buds to promote the larger ones to continue growing.

Great posts on here and I'll make sure to come back and write more.

I also have a nugami Kumquat tree with four fruit on it and waiting for it to ripen. I'm hoping by February they will.

Thanks
TommyG

Here is a link that might be useful: sunroomgardening.blogspot.com

Johnmerr. When I said let Mother Nature do the job, I was speaking hypothetically. Of course humans must assist with general maintenance,'watering, potting, fertilizing, etc.'

Not Starting from Scratch.

I believe ALL citrus need thinning. Some fruit drop naturally, but more often than not, humans need to intervene.

Tommy. Inspect your new, Improved Meyer's Lemon thoroughly. Look for the culprit that is chewing leaves.
Are you able to ID insects?

Signs of insects: Webbing, white cottony patches, brown lumps, sticky leaves/stems, and more.

Since you're in z6 your citrus are indoors. Tiny holes indicate plant pests, large holes can be made by pets, 'although pets usually rip the entire plant apart,' lol.

Once you ID the culprit, narrow down, it'll be easier ridding 'X' insect. Toni

My first post, hope I'm not hijacking but I have the same concern with my new Meyer lemon tree that I planted this Feb. I live north of Houston and so far this little 4-1/2 foot tree loves its new home!

I'm not sure if all these blooms will produce fruit. Do I wait or start removing now? Hopefully this picture posts.

Kind of an old thread to tack onto. You might get more answers if you started your own thread.

That being said, I'd wait until the blossoms turn into tiny fruits, and then thin them. I believe it's been said that if you take off the flowers it will just make more, so wait and take off the tiny fruits instead.

I would take off all for a young tree that size, and let it put it's energy into growth this year. Next year I'd probably leave about 6 or so. But that is really hard for most folks to do, so if you must leave some, I'd say no more than 3. Imo.
Nice looking tree by the way.

I'm wondering the same thing. My little guy (improved Meyer lemon) has lots of fruits. Should I thin? How do I do that? Just cut above the fruit stem?

JG. you could leave them if you wanted buy you will sacrifice growth of the plant. It will self thin anyways to probably 1 or 2 but I would even leave those. Maybe next season you could leave 1-2. However its your tree and I know how hard it is to take off exactly what we have these trees for. Especially if its the first one

Thank you!!

I hear the generally accepted amount of fruit is 1 per 40 leaves. Give or take.

How long will a Meyer stay ripe on the tree before you need to pick it?

'For sure, if you bought it at Lowes, it is on Flying Dragon (dwarf) rootstock;'

Actually up here in the 'north' it's more likely that the plant was grown from cuttings.

Thanks for the feedback John, could you elaborate on how the fruit are thinned? As in where to cut/twist them off? Mine put out this cluster in the late summer/ early fall, along with two or three other smaller clusters, and I just checked it a day or two ago and it's been flowering again and setting some fruit, not to mention there are tiny nubs of blooms and leaves starting to grow all over the plant.

Dan, that cluster in the photo I would thin to maybe the 4 ; just
clip them off at the top of the fruit. Later, depending on the health
and size of the tree/limb I might reduce them to 2. If you leave that
cluster to "Mother Nature", the tree will probably drop 3 or 4; but then
it would "forget" to grow.

I have a three year old Meyer Lemon tree that produced over 200 lemons this year. I always wanted a lemon tree and this has made me so happy

Please post a picture. Mine is the same age and I only had 26 lemons

I doubt a 3 year old Meyer would produce 200 lemons; ours do, but they are on Macrophylla root, planted in the ground, and in a tropical climate. Maybe you have had it 3 years and it was a couple years old when you bought it. Anyway, congratulations.

I have had a Meyer lemon for about two years- I’m guessing it was 2-3 years when I got it. It is grafted into an unknown rootstock. I bought it from my tree guy at the farmers market. Right now it is very healthy. It is about five foot tall and has about 40 grape sized lemons on it. It is still trying to bloom again and has a few babies as well. It dropped at least half of its baby fruits on its own. It is in a large terra-cotta pot. My question is this.... if I don’t want my tree to grow any more, should I forego thinning and just let all of the lemons mature? Does a tree drop larger than grape sized fruit? It is outdoors and gets lots of sun here in 7b. Also- I seem to have some tiny white flies in the dirt around the base and some spiders spinning webs to catch some random bugs that are on it. I’m not a huge fan of insecticidal soap. Any other suggestions for me. My first two summers with this tree were disappointing. One year I had about 5 good sized lemons and huge storm blew the tree over and knocked odd most of them, and last year I ended up with one lemon that refused to ripped for a year. It was not tasty.

I would love to see a 3 y/o lemon with 200 lemons. Please post a picture to back up your statement.

Mines the same way and I was wondering how to thin it back

Hi Im new to lemon growing. A few years ago i bought a lemon tree from a garden centre here in Italy ( in the north) i loved the perfume it gave off. It made plenty of blossem but most fell off. In winter it was protected and left outside, it now has one decent sized lemon and a couple of small ones. Im happy about that. About 18 months ago i bought 2 lemon trees, well they werent trees they were twigs and extremely cheap. I thought ok i'll try and grow them but if they dont grow I wont have lost much. They are both doing well and have loads of babies and blossom . They are both in tubs and i'm so pleased with them. One is a Meyer and the other I don't know. The meyer is perfect but the other one during the winter decided to curl its leaves but now its putting out so many new leaves it seems to have taken up its life again. I don't have a question but thought this might encourage people not to give up on them. Our next door neighbour has 6 trees that are along the fence and the perfume is incredable.