If you presently have apple or stone-fruit trees in your yard, you might anticipate your new citrus tree to take exactly the same severe early pruning. This is not the case. Unlike deciduous fruit trees, evergreen citrus trees produce powerful wood, contour themselves nicely and ripen fruit in nesting branches. Orange and grapefruit trees (Citrus spp.) Generally require no major pruning for the first 20 decades of their lives aside from cutting out dead wood. If you want, you can trim orange trees to create a more pleasing contour, but limit grapefruit pruning into the absolutely essential due to the risk they will develop Rio Grande gummosis disease.

Prune out dead branches out of the citrus trees whenever you detect them. Eliminate dead wood at the point of origin. If you’re uncertain if a branch is dead, scratch it with your fingernail or a sharp knife, then exposing the bark layer beneath. Green wood under means that the division remains alive.

Cut back broken or damaged limbs at least 6 inches into healthy wood. Remove crossing branches to stop them rubbing together. This pruning can be done at any time of the year.

Trim out suckers — vigorous shoots that appear under the graft point of the tree — whenever you see them. These shoots are the exact same timber as the root stock, not just the cultivar, and the sucker leaves might appear different than others on the tree. Suckers won’t produce fruit and you need to remove them.

Eliminate the lowest layer of branches and trim the next greatest layer to raise the “skirt” of the tree, if you wish to do so for aesthetic functions. Note that this isn’t essential pruning as it doesn’t influence the health of the tree or increase fruiting. Many citrus growers enables orange branches to sweep the ground. This makes fruit much easier to achieve and prevents weed growth.

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