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How to prune a dwarf lemon If you keep potting your
dwarf Meyer lemon up into the next size pot each year, it will grow
into a beast too heavy to maneuver out the door. Putting our
house plants outside in the summer is the sum-total of my pest
management plan, so I chose to instead use some bonsai techniques to
keep the dwarf citrus at a manageable size.  I waited until I'd harvested
all of the fruits,
but made sure to time my pruning to come before the lemon tree opened
its first blooms. With Mark's help, I
yanked the tree out of its pot and used a bread knife to shave off
about a third of its root ball.  Cutting back roots helps
miniaturize the tree, and also ensures that the lemon won't get
rootbound and strangle itself when roots circle the inside of the
pot. Meanwhile, the technique allows me to replace a third of the
potting soil with well composted manure, which will make sure our
darling lemon gets plenty of micronutrients to round out its weekly
meals of diluted
urine.  To counteract the stress
of suddenly cutting off part of the tree's feeding apparatus, I also
trimmed away about a third of its branches. I'd never actually
pruned the lemon before, so I focused on shaping it to an open center system, removing twigs that were
shaded under other branches. I tried to leave as many of the
branches with tiny bloom buds as possible, but figured the long term
shape of the tree trumped the current year's fruit. (If I was
pruning a young tree, I'd try to focus on three main limbs, but I
didn't want to make my changes to drastic on this long-unpruned tree.) Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.
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