Bigger pot and feeding for a lemon tree?

[Rossa]

I bought a lemon tree 2 years ago and it is in a 12"/30cm pot, both diameter and height. It goes out in summer after last frosts and stays inside on windowsill for winter with no problems. Has blossom already and keeps its leaves all year round. Think it is now 3 or 4 years old and had 3 lemons grow to full size last year.

My question is, is it now time to put it into a bigger pot? It is about 30" tall now and could maybe go for another year or so.

Any tips, please?

Also I don't use citrus feed. Is this necessary? I've seen that you need a different feed for summer than the one for winter. Maybe feeding it will produce more fruit. Just though it would fruit more as it got older.

[starloc]

12 inch pot does not sound that bad size, but they should be repotted every few years, have a look inside the pot if the roots are circling the sides, if they are you should go a little larger.

Be carefull not to go to too large a pot, just go to one a little bit larger in volume, a maximum of 4 inch wider in total, excess volume in the pot makes it harder to keep the roots healthy, make sure you use a decent citrus fertiliser, preferbly add something to it to increse drainge , like some barch chippings , perlite or CHC chips ( coconut husk ), its important to check there are a decent number of drinage holes in the pot, preferbly in the sides at the bottom so they cant block when on the floor.

Using a citrus feed is important, there are other feeds but most do not have the right ballnce of NPK , some do though, but most even with correct NPK do not have the added micronutrients that citrus need to make them grow/fruit well, i find the chempak seems to work well / best of the ones i use, but i do spray every month at least with eposom salts for added magnesium as well

Do you prune it at all?, if so it will reduce the fruit levels a bit, if you get fair number of flowers but they fall off, do you polinate them yourself, if you hand polinate you tend to get more fruit on the tree

if a lot of fruit form and fall off as tiny fruit, you can impove this with the citrus fertiliser having the correct nutrients , but even with citrus fertiliser a trick is to spray the tree with a mix of 1 teaspoon potassium nitrate (saltpeter) in a litre of water , round the time the tree is forming flower buds / flowering a few times a week, keep going for a few weeks every now and then as the small fruit form