5 Tips on PRUNING & SHAPING FRUIT (Citrus) TREES

Hi, my name is Charles Malki, biologist and plant expert with Ivory Organics, where we grow cool plants, and today we're going to be pruning this standard Eureka lemon tree that's here behind me. You can see how productive it is, but it's now measuring somewhere between 15 to 20 feet tall in three short years. Check that out. In this lesson, we're going to discuss five helpful tips, and the first one is starting off with, do I prune my citrus? There's a lot of research out there that recommends not to prune your citrus, and that citrus should be more free growing, and that the only reason to prune your citrus tree would be, you know, to basically manage a branch that's growing in the wrong direction. But there's other value other than that, and in my opinion, it's important to prune your citrus back annually at least by 5 to 10 percent per year for the purpose of specifically making sure that the base is stronger and larger than the top. You don't want the top of the plant and the base of the plant to be equal to one another, but by pruning at least 5 to 10 percent off the top, you're going to have a base that will better support the top of the plant and also result in a better quality fruit on the plant as well. Now, citrus come in all sorts of sizes. From dwarf, as you can see here in this pot, I've got a dwarf Meyer, which is also known as the sweet lemon variety, and this here has been in the container for about three years. You can see within, you know, three years, I still have a plant measuring only about a foot, maybe a foot and a half tall compared to my standard variety of citrus, as you can see here, measuring as much as 20 and still growing. To my left here is a semi-dwarf navel orange tree. If you check this out over here, you can see this here is about two and a half going on to three years as well. We can see the trunk, you can see the shape of it, which we're going to discuss shortly, but very healthy. Just started producing fruit this last winter, just a few pieces, but we're expecting several dozen fruit this year. So the best time to prune your citrus, and we've discussed this in the past, about a year ago in fact, where we harvest the lemons off of our sweet Meyer lemon variety citrus that we have in the backyard, we harvested the fruit and then immediately we'll also then prune the plant back as well. So the best time for accomplishing your major pruning of your citrus is going to be after the harvest of the fruit as well as after your last chance of frost has passed. Somewhere in that window and before your citrus go into the main bloom that's going to support the main fruit, even on a lot of these citrus that are year-round, including this Eureka lemon tree, it's important to get the timing right so that you end up harvesting and yielding the maximum amount of fruit, which typically for most citrus will be wintertime. So it's important to get the timing right in order to maximize and not lose on the maximum yield of fruit you can enjoy for that year. Here we are now in the middle of April and we are going to be pruning the Eureka lemon tree now. Again, ideally this should have been done at least about a month or two ago as our last chance of frost here in Los Angeles, California passed at the end of January. So February would have been the ideal month to do this, but I'm just demonstrating this for you. And in regards to major pruning, major pruning is typically defined as pruning branches that are older than two to three years old. In this demonstration, all of the pruning we're doing are going to be on branches that are less than one year. Believe it or not, all of those branches that you see that are that tall are less than a year old. We're going to be bringing it down with the objective of bringing the fruit and the reach all within reach rather than having fruit that are not within reach. So that is the objective. Right now the tree is measuring about 15 to 20 feet tall. The goal is to bring it down to about 8 to 10 feet. So we're going to be reducing the height by about 50 percent and I'm going to do so in a very natural looking way so it doesn't look like I've completely chopped at it. We're going to be doing that lesson together momentarily. The other important lesson I want to share with you is the shape of the citrus and I told you that I really appreciate the shape of the semi-dwarf navel orange that I've got over here. If you take a look real quick and then we'll come back. So I brought with me for demonstration this umbrella. The goal when shaping your trees, and this applies for citrus as well as many other trees, is to make sure you've got a canopy that's going to be shading the underlying trunk and underlying branches from the sun as too much sun exposure can harm your trees in a very negative way. I'll actually share a few video links towards the back of this where we visited a property where there was third degree citrus burns on an orange tree. We visited even some fig trees that suffered third degree burns and third degree burns are basically where your citrus tree are out in the sun on these now not 12 but now approach approaching 13 and even 14 hours of sun in the spring and summer and what ends up happening is that the tree's bark ends up burning with that much exposure to light. It's important that the upper canopy of the plant shade and keep cool the underlying branches and tree trunk and if they're exposed again for prolonged periods of time what can happen is your first degree burn is a discoloration to the outer bark. A second degree burn is now damage to the underlying cambium layers and that's the underlying part of the bark that transports the waters and sugars underneath the bark and then after that your third degree burn is the underlying supporting wood that's basically holding the tree in place. So to avoid that damage what we've done to all of these citrus trees is that we've applied the iver organics 3-in-1 plant guard product which we're going to be reviewing towards the end and as you can see here we basically coated the plant all the way from the base up to the lower branches so the protection is basically from this point down. So we just discussed the umbrella being the ideal shape well let's take a look now at the Eureka lemon tree. If you come in a little closer you can see that these branches have all arched. It's actually created the arch due to the weight of these fruit that it's holding so all of those higher branches we're going to see as we bring them down actually are supporting a lot of fruit that'll eventually bring these branches down. If you stay there and take a look here it's doing exactly the same thing. See the branches are coming up and they're coming down under the weight of all of these fruit. It's quite spectacular and the pattern will just continue repeating itself. Eventually what's going to happen is that the tree is going to create its own canopy and ultimately shade all of this exposed bark and as you can see there's still quite a bit of sunlight that's coming in and once we open the upper canopy there's going to be even more light into the underlying trunk and lower branches all of which need to be protected and now we're going to start off with our pruning lesson so let's get started. So as I was walking around the standard Eureka lemon tree I was examining to see all the lower branches that I'm going to preserve and to kind of determine which of the branches that are going directly straight up we're going to bring down so that a lot of the resources within the plant can be dedicated to those underlying branches and work on fruit production at a lower level. However the other objective as well aside from pruning is to consider bending and training some of the branches to create that open canopy and I found a branch that I'd actually like to preserve rather than prune and one of the things you can consider doing is actually shaping and bending the branches that are between year one and year three into the right direction so that it can create that open canopy that will accomplish the goals of having a nice open and again you're looking to make sure that none of the branches also cross you want to have a very open structure with a nice open canopy that will also provide shade to the underlying trunk and branches as we mentioned earlier. So what we're going to do is I found one of the branches way up there one of the tallest ones that we're going to bend in position and basically fill in this entire area that's right over my head simply by putting a stake into the ground so we're going to do this right now. So the goal here is to simply take this branch which has quite a few lemons on the end of it as well and that's not what we're looking for is the fruit but I'm just looking at the direction of the left of the branch and I can bend it right in here in this position to fill in this part of the canopy and still keep the plant within about eight feet. We'll now go with our twine when tying a knot make sure you put the knot against the stake and not against the tree and here we go so again you can see that we placed and positioned the knot against the stake we didn't put any knots against the stem so that so as not to constrict the underlying cambium tissues and the flow of the again the waters and sugars within the plant and now within the next six to twelve months that branch will be permanently in that position and the tree structure will be based off of or at least for this section off of this branch that we've decided to keep and now train the resulting branches and structure off of that. Now with that done what we're going to do is start pruning around the tree follow me. So our first lesson is to bring the height down so if you can come and follow me I want to share with you how we're going to hopefully bring this down the first thing and again even though we've got quite a bit of fruit here and I know this is going to be hard to see we're going to be taking it off and keep this in mind by pruning this back it's going to be that much more resources and energy that's coming out of the plant that's going to support the remaining fruit resulting in a better quality and even larger size fruit by removing all of this excess fruit. It's also a good practice again to also thin fruit so if there was large clusters as there are in other parts and we'll get to that we can do that right now if you come in a little closer you can see here we've got three lemons it wouldn't be a bad idea to remove one of them so as more energy can go into the other two. Well let's continue on now if you come in this direction here you'll see what we're going to do is we're going to bring this entire branch back to this next smaller branch and I'm hoping you can follow this fork in the branch that comes up to this point over here and what we're going to do is we're just going to cut at an angle and prune and now we've just shortened this branch like so and we're going to continue this pattern coming down. You're fortunate when you actually have a small branch that's coming out of at a shorter distance. I can continue even bringing this back further if you can follow me again there's another fork in the branch which is right here there's another little branch that we can cut to so that all the energy and resources that are coming from the branch can go into this branch or you can go back even further to this branch over here and prune like so and now we've brought it back another foot and a half we just removed all of this tightening the plant and keeping it away from our walkway that's over here. What we're going to do now with this branch is we're going to bring it down you're going to have the option now we're bringing it down all the way to the source where it's coming or you'll have the option to also prune it at one of these leaf buds and each one of these leaf buds if I prune it I'm going to show you an example on the other side but once you prune it it's going to encourage each of these buds at the base of the leaf to also produce branches as well so we'll just prune like so and we can do the same thing here as well and I'm basically following the leaf down trying to stay in the general area and depending on which leaf I prune from if we take a look here if I prune it there then we're going to get branches that are going to go out in that direction if I prune over here it's going to result in branches going out in this direction so you're always like when you're on this side of the plant let's say we're on the left side you're going to be looking for leaves that will hopefully push branches in the left direction and away from the at this point let's just prune and then we'll moderate and select the branches accordingly as they come out and so here we go if we've got too many branches and this is the decision we've got to make you can narrow this group of four branches that are coming out to only three by simply pulling one out which so now you can take a look in this area we've simply brought this entire height out and we brought it down my reach is eight feet so we're now down to about six and a half to seven feet tall and I've got now got lemons I'm going to be continuing this pattern throughout maybe you can see a couple more as we go through here if you want to follow here we go I would typically come down and again you can see here's a nice cluster of lemons if I were to keep it it's a good practice to select from the four which one are your best three which are here's a good one and a good one this one here has some scar tissues it's also got a little deformed shape you would typically prune this one out maybe even take out a second so that all the resources are focused on just those two but anyways we're going to bring this one down as well with again the goal is we're going to keep most of this plant within the height of about six to eight feet so with that being said let's follow this down and again we can go down to where the next branch is which is over here but again being that this is too low for me and being I want to match it to what I've done over here I'm going to try to go across and I'm going to prune it similarly at this junction right there so we're going to have this branch and this branch and you can see over here we've got all of these new buds that are forming flowers and ultimately these flowers will get more developed creating little tiny fruit and then we're going to have some more fruit clusters like so and here's even some other smaller fruit as well right there and another one right behind it and another one right in front of it so anyways a highly productive tree the Eureka Lemon is a lot of fun to grow here's another quick tip is when you've got branches that again are growing towards the center of the vase again the goal and the objective with your citrus trees to have branches that are going from the center out but here we got a branch that's coming from the out the branch on going in the out direction that's coming back in towards the center that's this branch over here it may look good but it's not an ideal shape for maximizing the amount of light and exposure to the leaves that will ultimately support the maximum amount of fruit so this branch is coming out and with this one what we're going to do is we're going to cut it back all the way to the branch and the source that it came from so if you're coming a little closer you can see how close we're going to be pruning this branch out so here we go with our pruners and we're going to come in here and prune it like so another example here we are you can see and here's I guess the example we don't have to go on the other side you can see that we pruned this tip probably about a month or two ago and since then it's created one two three four five new branches so we've got all of these branches you can see it's going to be a lot more compact it's going to have a lot more branches a lot more opportunity for more flowers and ultimately supporting more fruit at a much reduced height one other important tip a lot of you ask also like how low can I go typically with a standard variety whether it's citrus or any other fruit tree you can typically bring it down safely to a semi-standard or a semi dwarf height so a plant that would naturally grow 15 to 25 feet tall being standard can easily be brought down to about 8 to 12 feet which would be more of a semi-standard sized tree and then if it were a semi-standard tree you can easily bring that down to a dwarf size of about three to six feet so if you're dealing with standards you can bring it down to semi-standard from semi-standard down to about a dwarf height if you try taking the standard size tree and pushing it down to a dwarf height then all you're going to end up is with a very stressed tree that all it's going to want to do is try to grow the goal is you want to make sure that the standard tree has a standard amount of branches and basically a standard number of leaves to then support fruit if you bring it back too far it'll throw it into shock where it all it will want to do is push new growth at the expense of fruiting and sometimes at all so again this is going to be a safe height even though it looks pretty dramatic and even though i gave you that rule at the beginning a minimum of five to ten percent but here what we're doing is we're beginning the training process of this particular citrus within our garden to train it to be within that range of about eight to ten feet tall let me continue so here we are check out all of these fruit that we inadvertently removed and pruning this tree behind me there's still one more cut we're going to make but all of these fruit will still be recycled we'll squeeze what we can out of them um flavor water we'll end up doing something with that but let's um take a look at this last cut to share with you what we've done with it so with this branch that we've bent out of the way it's now sticking out disproportionately too far i'm going to give you a tour all the way around the plant in just a minute but i'm just going to shorten that so it matches the rest of the tree if you come in a little closer check out all check out what's happening in the under canopy of this tree which will now have an opportunity to grow better than ever check out again all of these little fruit and flowers that never saw the sun it was always in the shade and there's fruit here and here and here and here all along the stem all along those stems all under here i would say in just this vicinity of about four square feet there's at least another 20 to 30 fruit so when it comes to fruit production even though i've just cut maybe 50 percent of the mass let's say of the tree but again all i've removed were branches that were under one year old i didn't remove any large branches if you're going to cut things that were larger in diameter let's say about an inch or a half an inch or greater being two to three year old wood or older i would have recommended you wait until after the chance to process past being here in los angeles the ideal month being february with that being said let's take a tour around the tree and then we're going to discuss one last topic so you can see here i measure six feet tall you can see most of the branches and all of the fruit are all now within reach so here we are so now let's talk about the ivory organics products if you're coming a little closer this pamphlet i want to share with you that's a pdf on the ivoryorganics.com website which talks about centuries proven methods one effective and patented formula i've circled and read a couple of important points that relate to what we're talking about whitewashing tree trunks is an old-fashioned but effective method to prevent sun scald of tree bark from bright winter sunshine oregon state university whitewash young trees routinely at planting university california whitewash older trees we can say in this example being this is a three-year-old citrus tree if they develop sparse canopies or severely pruned it looks like we may have severely done a prune job and it is now more sparse than it was before so there is a benefit now for whitewashing which i'll point out momentarily and then paint the trunk and lower limbs with whitewash to help prevent sunburn and damage from bores and i'll discuss that and painting tree trunks with whitewash help repel adult beetles especially on young trees so um let's now discuss that the ivory organics products what they are is i've got these two cans um when you take a look at the whitewash products you'll see some cans are in yellow and other ones that are in blue the yellow can is the three-in-one whitewash protection against summer sunburn and insects and rodents um both products are for use on your roses fruit nut trees it's registered material for use in organic agriculture and again with the label on both of them it says protects newly installed plants and trees shields pruning damage surfaces the main difference between the yellow product and the blue product is that the yellow product has these seven natural garden oils that offer the insect and rodent repellent protections the castor oil cinnamon oil clove oil garlic oil peppermint oil rosemary oil and spearmint oil whereas the blue label which simply reads whitewash instead of three-in-one plant guard is protection against summer sunburn winter sun scald which again would be beneficial to apply in this instance as well the um active ingredients in here are garlic powder and cinnamon powder as well so let's take a look at um what the contents are if you open it up here so if we take a look at the three-in-one yellow label product what it comes with is the organic base powder which is here and it's also available in colors green and brown this is now color white and then it comes with this bubble wrap oil vial that contains the seven and one the seven natural garden oils and that's right here in this bubble wrap if you were to open the whitewash formula so now if we open the whitewash label it basically comes with what appears to be the same powder the difference is this has the added garlic and cinnamon powder and there's no oil vial in here the advantages of using the oil product is to now protect against this situation some of you may remember that we had a branch about a few months ago that was over here that basically broke under the weight of all of the fruit and so what we did is we basically protected it with the three-in-one um plant guard color white like so you can already see the whiteness but i'll paint it again and i'm going to zoom you guys in so you can see it but you're basically going to coat that damaged wood the reason you're going to protect coat that damaged wood the reason you're going to want to coat that damaged wood and that exposed surface is again to protect it from basically all pests and pathogens from entering that exposed wood it'll take at least a year possibly up to two years for that wound to callous over and and heal itself but in the meantime that layer of ivory organics infused with those seven natural garden oils will repel insects from wanting to penetrate through and ultimately bore into the wood and begin to weaken the integrity of the tree so here we've just opened the canopy in in the middle of april a lot of growers and orchards across the country will typically prune their plants again in the summer once they harvest their fruits whether they be almonds or peaches or plums or apples or anything else and they'll prune them one more time after harvest to encourage a few more branches that'll support more flowers the following spring but when you open that canopy as we just have followed by some hot summer days or even there's some hot spring days where we'll reach into the 90s and even 100s that can cause significant damage to the underlying tree trunk and branches so what we're going to do now is we're going to coat the underlying tree trunk as you can see all of these leaves are also now getting sun that otherwise never got sun as they were always in the shade of the upper branches but what we're going to do here is we're going to basically take the three-in-one product and continue coating the lower tree trunk and branches like so and you're going to want to go all the way down to the base as you can see there's quite a bit of light all the way down to the ground level and we're going to work our way up I'm going to take my time and finish this up afterwards and the reason you're going to want to do this with the ivory organics product instead of using a chemical paint product is as you can see I'll be coming a little closer if you come around maybe on this side you can see that eventually the plant is going to continue growing so this surface over here is coated with the ivory organics just now on this side I coated it about six months ago and you can see with the application eventually the product begins to come off the tree is going to expand and on average the tree trunk is only going to be is going to be there for about a year to as much as three years on average and the tree trunk is going to basically come off the tree and it's going to replace it with a new layer of bark all of that paint if it was chemical paint from your paint store that was attached to that bark is going to end up again if this was chemical paint in your soil for decades if not centuries chemical paint if it's designed to be on your house is designed to last for decades if not a century or greater the ivory organics product is designed to break down into the elements let's even take a look at the inert ingredients if you take a look over here and you can see that the base of it is iron oxide which controls the color limestone which is basically a you know crushed rock that's that's you know the consistency of the powder mica which is a clay base milk using milk proteins to help with the binding within the product and then silica which is another word for sand all of these have been broken down into its elements and crushed very fine and proportionally added in a way that it creates a very strong bond that will last on average on your plants for about a year if it's young tissue where it's very green and waxy the adhesion to the tree may be less but if it's as in this case where the bark is becoming a little bit more porous the application will last again on average a year depending on your conditions and weather it could be closer to nine months and again in drier climates it can even be longer than a year so on average these products are applied and reapplied to your tree once a year a couple of you've asked about my nagami kumquat citrus that we've also done a video on where we potted it about two maybe even three years ago and here it is and I want to share a couple of points before I give you the overall look if you come in a little closer I want to share with you where the graft is if I can spin this pot here if you take a look you can see that there's quite a few suckers happening it's important as part of your maintenance and management of the citrus trees is to regulate and monitor these and also remove them if your goal is as it is here to basically grow your your citrus as in this one in a tree form so I've got in the pot and I want basically all of the branches on this side or any of the suckers to be removed and I want all of the growth to be about two to three feet off of the ground level within the pot what we're going to do here is and I want to share with you is the graft union is right here where my finger is right at this point if I can spin it let's turn this pot a little bit more and a little bit more to get the maximum amount of sunlight on this so I can share with you if you take a look over here this is the root stock from this point down is the root that basically controls the number one the height of the variety that's grafted from this point up so on this root stock being it's a standard root stock I could have put on here eureka lemon I could have put a meyer lemon I could have put some oranges I could have put some limes I could have put anything related to the citrus root stock on top of it and grafted it to create the height plant that I want if I'm seeking a dwarf tree then I would graft my negami kumquat to a dwarf root stock and have a dwarf size plant if the goal is to have a semi-dwarf citrus tree then I'm going to be looking for a dwarf root stock and grafting upon that or at least looking for a grower that makes semi-dwarf citrus tree by grafting on a semi-dwarf root stock and then if I'm looking for standard as in this case we went with a standard root stock and and basically they grafted onto it the negami kumquat and here we are what's happening is I want to share with you on this side is you can take a look if I can spin it back in a position you can see here is exposed wood this is very important to protect it from boars the beetles termites or any other pathogens that may enter this wood or possibly rot this wood resulting in damage to what I like calling the heart of the tree being the underlying tree trunk the lower branches if there's any damage to this part of the plant then it'll damage the integrity of the entire plant and affect the entire health of the plant however if there's damage at a higher position among at the plant then I can cut at a higher position and recreate another plant without compromising the entire life of the plant so I always like protecting the heart the heart being defined as the lower tree trunk and the lower branches among the tree and so what we're going to do is we're number one is to protect this exposed wood and secondly as you can see as the plant is now expanding you can see some cracks in the ivory organics from the last application being about 8 to 12 months ago we're going to reapply so what I want to share here is the citrus from the root stalk down is something different than the citrus from the root stalk up being the scion wood or the grafted selected variety of citrus if you take a look at the leaf structure the leaf structure from below the root stock and here's a sucker that's coming off is not the same as if you can take a look this is a trifoliate citrus meaning three leaves three foliate trifoliate so this is a trifoliate citrus variety um root stock that they use we're going to remove it if I allow this to exist it's going to take the energy of all of the nutrients and all the benefits that I'm putting into the soil it's going to go into this undesirable root stock to the detriment of the selected variety of citrus that we're trying to grow up above so the first thing I'm going to do before reapplying a coat of the ivory organics to the tree trunk is going to remove any of the underlying suckers especially if it's coming out of the root stock these here which are right at the union between the root stock and the grafted variety I can tell automatically is not the same leaf this here is the nagami kumquat leaf as you can see the shape of it is significantly different than the root stock trifoliate citrus the nagami kumquat only has one leaf pattern compared to this root stock that has the three leaf pattern so this here is nagami kumquat but again we're going to remove them to encourage all of the nutrients and energy and strength to go and support the upper canopy and that the tree doesn't create a lazy habit of supporting lower branching to the detriment of the upper branching and the design and the structure we're looking for so we're just removing all of these like so and we've just cleaned that all up and now what we're going to do is we're going to take our three in one ivory organics color green and let's just reapply another coat to get this off to an excellent protective start for another warm and sunny spring and summer here in sunny southern California and again I already mentioned this at the start is that most importantly we want to make sure we fill that in to keep any disease and pathogens and pests out of it one other important thing and for those of the that those of you that have done your research there's a lot of research that says not to apply paint and not to apply tar to those wounds and the reason is is latex paint being latex creates a waterproof barrier tar another waterproof barrier will result in rot to anything that you coat this product as you can see when you apply it is very porous and dry and allows moisture to pass through so again a very different product than latex paint and tar and again the main point as well is that this being organic will break down over the course of about a year maximum two whereas whereas tar and latex paint are designed to last for decades and as again the bark sheds which is a natural process you don't want to result in a soil that has tar and latex paint in it so let me show you now the standard nagami kumquat finished results if you take a look you can see all of this new growth being here we are now the middle of April it's pushing out all of this new growth all over the top we've removed all of the underlying suckers this is what the fruit looks like if you want to take a look this is close to what the size is it could be about twice as big as well i've got right next to it over here a egg mass from a praying mantis that's the reason i left the fruit was to remind myself where that um well pretty much that nest is and i'll take a look we've just coated the nagami kumquat with the ivory organics color green and again just a reminder it's also available in colors brown too because all of these underlying branches and trunk as we said the heart of the tree is defined as the tree trunk and all of those lower branches as long as we protect that if there's any branches in the upper canopy that get damaged we can simply prune it and a new branch will come out of the heart but all of these underlying leaves and smaller stems have never been in the sun and to eliminate the risk of any sun stress to those you can take a product like this which is the ivory organics 3-in-1 plant guard ready-to-use spray where you can also use the can and follow the directions on the back to basically take the brush-on solution and turn it into a foliar spray but this one here is the ready-to-use you'd simply spray it even on all those harder to reach branches and stems like this young branch over here we can simply spray even on the young fruit that again have never been in the sun this will offer protection as you can see there's a nice light white film on the fruit on the leaves and even on these tender young leaves as well which when it drives leaves a very light a very light and white film to basically repel some of that excess sunlight with the heat to keep the plant much cooler hence the name we grow cool plants so in conclusion i just want to thank the many garden enthusiasts out there that have used the ivory organics products in their garden and i am giving credit to all of you in this video by basically placing cards throughout the video of your videos where you've shared your experiences as well as i'm going to put four different youtube channels for different youtube gardening channels that have used the ivory organics products in different ways to benefit their gardens as well so take a moment to view them subscribe there and just enjoy the experience a different experience with other garden enthusiasts throughout the country and with that being said i hope you found this video informative and educational and if so be sure to like it most importantly by subscribing below you'll be connected to this and all of our other educational gardening videos thanks again for watching and happy gardening