Pruning citrus trees

[gavilan]

When should I prune mature citrus trees?

[annfoto]

Spring is the best time but it is not too late to do it now.
You can remove suckers at anytime.
Remember that you cannot burn the prunings at this time of year without a licence. You could however get a decent sized shredder and dispose of them that way. Anything over an inch or so in diameter makes good firewood for the winter.

[Wicksey]

Surely the citrus fruit is forming now ... ours is. We pruned ours after we had taken the fruit and before it flowered in February. We read in one of the free magazines to prune fruit trees in July to stop suckers forming, but apart from our apricot that fruits in May all our other fruit matures in late autumn and winter (various citrus, mango, avocado, fig, pomegranate, chiramoya) so is well under way now.

[annfoto]

The advantage of pruning after flowering is that you can choose which branches to crop from and remove weak unproductive branches or to thin out overcrowded ones.
Every couple of years we get a few days frost in February which kills off the ends of some branches, by April these become more obvious.
If you remove developing fruit now you will have fewer oranges but they will be larger ones. Our trees usually flower mid March and pruning them whilst buzzing with bees is a step too far for me