Lemon trees, should I leave the old fruit on them?

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    rostikrostik
    Greenhorn
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    Hello dear friends! I am new to the site and to gardening in general. I am in south-western Turkey. I recently became the owner of some lemon trees, which have a lot of fruit on them. Now I can see the new buds developing. Am I meant to remove the old fruit from the tree or can I just leave it (some of it is pretty much inaccessible)? I also have oranges and mandarins. These are flowering, but there is no old fruit on them. Do these require different treatment or can I just bunch them all under “citrus”?

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    fswanneFSwanne
    Greenhorn
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    Hello rostik – seems an answer was long in coming!

    All these citrus you can treat the same way. They’re very closely related, so you don’t need to have very different schedules for each unless you really need to go into detail. For instance, some varieties cross-pollinate better with others, etc, and then you do need to pay attention to small details.

    As for old fruit, by all means keep them on the tree and pick them if they’re ripe and ready. Only remove old fruit if they’re brown, black or otherwise unhealthy: that’s a sign they’re sick. And if they’re sick, they’ll spread their disease!

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    fast driverFast Driver
    Expert gardener
    Private message

    Not much into citrus trees but I asked the same question to some acquaintances who were growing this type of fruit trees after seeing some fruits just left on the tree often due to inaccessibility or just very few fruits and so harvesting them is just a waste of time. And apparently, it’s okay to leave fruits on the tree until they ripe, dry off and eventually fall on the ground. No influence on the overall health of the tree.

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