Prune Lemon Trees in Summer

Whether you want to prune lemon trees in summer or start pruning a lemon tree indoors, you can learn pretty quickly and improve your yield and the health of your tree.

Many properties across the Bay Area region have lemons that have stood fast for decades, still producing decent yields. When most people think of tree pruning, often they will think of winter time (i.e. apples, pears and cherries).

However, citrus has a sub-tropical heritage and thus is best pruned when there is no threat of frost or rain. Here in the Bay Area, you can do some light touch-up pruning to that lemon or lime for optimal health.

Easy June Pruning Steps

Step One: Prune out any dead wood. Generally with lemons and limes, dead wood is obvious and often looks like gray pencils. After you have taken out the dead wood, look inside the center of the tree. Trees that are too dense inside can often succumb to mites, scale, whitefly thrips, and mold. By pruning out and reducing, you can allow light and air to penetrate all the branches and allow more fruit to set inside the tree.

Step Two: Find the non-fruiting, non-flowering branches. Lemon trees can be happily flowering and fruiting throughout much of the year. By slowly gazing and scanning, you can find the occasional small branches that have neither flowers nor fruit. Again, go slow! You will begin to see that perhaps one out of 20 branches is a small shoot of leaves with no fruiting nor flowering parts. By thinning out these less-vigorous branches, you are supporting the branches that the tree is choosing to put fruiting energy into. The end product of this light pruning is more airflow and light penetration.