Getting lemon trees to branch

Question

I have two lemon trees which have been hesitant to branch anywhere but at the tips where I trimmed them because they were growing too tall. They're about 1 year and 8 months old now. I grew them from seeds from a lemon bought from local grocery store.

Would you have expected the lemon trees to have branched out more by now? How do you recommend I encourage them to branch out more?

The taller tree actually did sprout three branches at the very top where I had trimmed it; I pinches all those branches off because I did not want it to become top-heavy.

My apologies for the rotated pictures - that's not fixable to my knowledge within Stack Exchange, and rotating them on my desktop prior to uploading didn't help.

One question per "question. Please move Hindu rope in as a new question. It would be easier to answer. — Giacomo Catenazzi, Mar 15 '19 at 10:49
Done - I thought it would be better to combine them to avoid potential redundancy, but you have a good point. — BGreen, Mar 16 '19 at 13:13

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 15 '19 at 10:54

Note: this is most a comment. I'm not an expert of lemon trees (but I have few very old trees). I expect somebody will give you a better answer (which is the purpose of this site: having multiple answers, and voting the best one).

I think lemon tree should stop growing soon. Ev. reduce fertilizers and watering, and add Sun. Lack of sun will make plant taller. Lemon tree doesn't need much fertilizer and watering, so maybe if you reduce them, they start to develop as "an adult" (branches and flowers). But I'm not an expert on lemons, nor on pruning them.

Thank you! The taller one actually had sprouted three branches, all at the very top. I removed them so it wouldn't get top-heavy. (I edited the main question to include this information.) They'll certainly be getting more sun soon as the weather warms and they move back outdoors. — BGreen, Mar 16 '19 at 13:15

Getting lemon trees to branch

1 Answers1