Why!!. Can you wait till you pick all your fruit. Your tree trying to tell you something.

I knocked all the fruit off this spring from moving it around in and out of the house so there is no fruit this year. I am thinking let's get it done and over with so new growth can begin.

I got the picture, you have lived in Cal, that tells me a whole lot, for one they don't give a second thought to prune a citrus tree. We tend to be a little different because we don't have the abundances like the Californians. So go for it. In your care i don't think you going to end up with a dead tree, i have faith in you.

Thanks for the confidence. I have a tendency to get carried away with pruning whenever I have clippers in my hand. When it comes to my citrus babies, it's a whole other story. lol. I knew this tree had to be clipped because of the problems getting it through the door last year and just pushed it off.

What's wrong with the woody branches? They're perfectly normal. Sometimes I wish people from non-citrus growing climes could take a look at a mature full grown citrus tree just to get a perspective on what they are trying to grow.

Multiple reasons: they are not flexible going through the back door. That is how my fruit kept falling off which was by catching on the door frame and most of the fruit is on the outside branches. I have never trimmed the tree since I have owned it. I have scratched my face multiple times when moving it up the ramp into the house.

Is it too much to ask to give us a picture?

nik - Denise originally lived in California with mature citrus in the ground and has been adapting to handling them in pot culture, including overwintering the older, thick-branched ones inside without a greenhouse.

john - she doesn't have a smartphone (or digital camera) for photos, although would love to see some pics too. :-) Maybe her daughter could help.

Actually, I grew citrus in containers for years and a few in the ground in CA. Didn't stay long in the same house to see them mature. I did have trees in containers though and did well with them. When I had to move from CA to GA, I couldn't take my trees or other container plants with me as we had no home to move them to. I had to start over by ordering trees from FWG as citrus was not available locally at the time.

jenny is correct I have no smart phone and have had problems with loading pictures on here so I have given up. Doing a simple copy and paste here on this site doesn't work either so if I find something interesting to share I just copy and paste links.

What I would do, if the tree is too wide I would start all over. Prune the widest branches towards the bottom first. Let me explain this first, the bottom branches grows wider because the next higher branches go wider looking for more light etc.. Now that you have astablish the bottom lateral branches go up higher, shortened them, if the tree is too tall you can cut the central leader if you have one to the lower group of lateral branches. Does this sound like gabbletheegook to you? Let me know.

A couple of pictures of somewhat drastic pruning. New one has too many new shoots, got to cleaned it up a bit.

Same tree today.

Good pruning advice Bob. It will soon be time for me to start doing that! In fact I should do it to my variegated pink lemon.

persimmonbob, hahaha.

Denise - Brian posted some pictures about major pruning he did on two of his older trees. It might be helpful for you to see and talk with him. It was in the thread on greenscape gardens.

Here's the link:

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/anybody-heard-from-greenscape-gardens-dsvw-vd~5378801?n=382

PS - I really want to see pictures too!

Alanna, that type of pruning is too extreme for this time of year in my opinion. It's 90* here daily and a very good way to sunburn your tree.

Maybe I should prune like this. lol. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZpDSXDckWQ

Ha ha Denise! I watched one of those "Citrus University" videos (part of the series from South Africa that you posted in the other thread) that showed a large mechanical pruner, although the one showed only had 3 large circular blades if I remember correctly. :-D