Room lemon must have a crown that will consist of the right amount of skeletal branches, a large number of small twigs and overgrown shoots. All this can be easily achieved, you just need to know how to form the crown of a lemon. The crown must be shaped so that the plant, with the help of its leaves, can make maximum use of lighting and air.
Cherenkovannye plants can be formed without a stem, but for a room culture the height of the lemon can be about 10-15 cm.
You need to know the conditions of development and growth of the plant and when forming the crown of a lemon to take into account all its biological characteristics.
Do not forget that the lemon is a plant that can bear fruit. Therefore, you should set a goal every year to grow as many fruits as possible, and not just have a well-growing tree with a lot of leaves.
Lemon has its own characteristics of branching. First, a young plant has one shoot (vertical) of zero order. As a rule, in a year or even faster, shoots of the first order appear on it. Leave only 3-4 shoots. Next on them shoots of the second order, on them - the third order and so on are formed. It is important to remember that when a young tree produced shoots of the fourth order, it can already bear fruit, regardless of whether it was grafted or rooted.
The process of crown formation must proceed in this way. A vertically growing zero-order shoot should be cut when it reaches a height of about 15-20 cm. On this shoot, you need to choose 3-4 well-growing buds that are directed in different directions. It will become skeletal branches. As they grow, they need to be plucked as soon as they reach 20-30 centimeters. Each subsequent shoots of the new order should be shorter than the previous ones by 5 cm. Thus, shoots of the second order should be 20-25 cm long.
Shoots are non-fructifying, fatty and vertically growing. The adult tree can have branches that bear fruit in the first year. On the fruit branches of the upper part of the crown, growing horizontally or hanging down, the most useful ovary is formed.
Together with the growth of the plant (and the appearance of new shoots), the process of the withering away of old branches of higher orders begins. In order not to burden the lemon with useless and obsolete branches, it is necessary to trim from time to time, that is, to remove unnecessary shoots (old ones that grow in the wrong direction, etc.) and shorten the strong ones.
Tops (or fatty shoots) need to be removed completely or cut them to 20-25 cm, making them fruit shoots.
However, remember that you should not get carried away with pruning a tree, it can seriously weaken it.
Different types of pruning lead to different results, a short pruning is used to create new strong shoots, and a long one contributes to the formation of fruit buds.
The best time for pruning is spring, especially March, before the first growth, during the flowering budding phase. Also suitable for thinning branches and winter, after harvesting fruits. The combination of trimming in autumn and winter in some cases can serve as a replacement for pruning in the spring. In this case, the tree will bear fruit better next year.
An integral part of caring for the crown is timely nipping. Experienced limonovody recommend plucking excess shoots immediately upon their appearance, and at the necessary shoots pinch the tops as soon as they appear 5-7 sheets.
In order to harvest annually, we need not only pruning the crown and nipping the shoots. It is also necessary to remove a part of the flowers from the tree, thus carrying out the normalization of the crop. Abundant flowering can deplete the tree and reduce the amount of useful ovaries, and if the yield is too rich, the fruits can turn out to be of poor quality and the lemon may not bear fruit next time. When performing normalization, weak and superfluous flowers, buds and even branches with flowers are removed. The smaller the buds remain, the more they will have a useful ovary.
Old lemon trees with a small increase can be rejuvenated. To do this, trim the weak branches as short as possible to induce the growth of new shoots. With the correct rejuvenating pruning and the necessary top dressing, the tree can bear fruit for several years.