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Did I prune too much off of my Calamondin tree? I only removed the dead browning stems and left the growing new leaves alone...

17d 3h ago by lemmy.world/u/Dis32 in gardening

So I'm going to answer this with a depressing response from personal experience.

Yes. You did. Kalamonsi/ Calamondin, they do not respond well to pruning. In fact, they basically shut down growth almost entirely after pruning.

This is in contrast to a bears lime or mexican lime or persian lime (or any lemon or orange tree), which all respond very nicely with new growth to pruning.

I have a kalamonsi/ calamondin which is the exact same age as a mexican lime I have planted next to it. I bought them the same day, same size (1 gallon pots to start). Everything same same same same.

I put them into the ground next to each other so they could be buddies, and the kalimonsi rapidly outpassed and outproduced the mexican lime. Preposterously so. I got a ridiculous amount of fruit from the Kalamonsi, and I would get a large amount of limes from the mexican every october/ november or so. But the Kalamonsi both out grew and out produced the lime. In this time I did almost no trimming to either, just a little branch management on the lime to keep it off the soil.

A few years later, as the trees grew, I wanted to do a more serious pruning to select for a final shape I wanted the trees to assume so they didn't tear themselves apart as they grew and got heavy with fruit. I did an aggressive skeleton prune to both to select for the shape I wanted the trees to take so that they didn't destroy themselves with time. I did it the same day, and about the same amount of tree was left for either the kalamonsi and lime.

Now the sad part. This basically stunted the Kalamonsi almost never to recover. Its been years and its still stunted. It never recovered its vigorous growth and still puts out some fruit, but nothing like before.

But the lime, it LOVED being pruned. ANd it has now outpace the kalamonsi by several time, and become everbearing so I now get limes all year. I can basically induce flowering on the lime with a bit of trimming.

So, what I think happened, is that the kalamonsi is a far more "wild" type of citrus, and hasn't had the selective breeding like the mexican lime has. Because of this, it responds poorly to pruning. Probably best to just let the kalamonsi grow however it feels like it should. But because the mexican lime has been selectively bred, its much more able to and responsive to pruning.

That being said, citrus aren't apple trees. They don't require annual pruning. Its really only for shape and structure and maybe disease management. I would say any of the more wild citrus (kalamonzi, yuzu, finger lime, etc..) don't prune these. Just let the plant decide what to do.

It kinda depend on where you live and how much you pruning it, you're probably pruning it way too much for it to get super stressed and not growing anymore. I had mine stunted because of repeatedly devastated by caterpillars, now it does still grow some leaves after a year or so not doing anything, but i'm not sure if it will still grow. I live in the tropic so it's their perfect growing condition, but i guess once it decided not to outgrow its neighbours it will just stop. I've seen a lot of farmer pruning these thing, but they tend to just prune out lower branch and give it a light prune at the top, and they leave a tons of leaves

Yeah I'm also tropical. I'm not sure why mine stayed stunted after trimming. Maybe too aggressive but its really a wimp.

Gonna have to start a new one tbh, i know i still can't let go mine lol

I'm getting enough limes off my mexican to wait it out. But yeah. I should probably pull it and replant.

There is no limit to the amount of dead wood you can remove. So IF these branches were all dead, then you didn't harm anything. However, the fact that they died would suggest a serious health problem with the tree that had badly damaged it, since it's not normal for branches on the upper portion of the tree to just die this way.

Additionally, some of the trimmed branches look like they may have still been alive. If that's true, then you may have harmed the tree by removing them.

In the future it's best not to remove more than 25% of the living canopy at one time. If you're unsure what's alive or dead, you can find out by making a small scratch in the bark to see if there's still green beneath. Green and moist means the branch is alive, even if the surface is brown or has no leaves.

@Dis32
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