Satsuma Tree

Normal for many types of fruit trees, including citrus, to abort many young fruit particularly when heavy fruit set occurs. In fact for a 3 year old tree you might want to consider manually removing more young fruit than is self aborted to maximize tree growth and strengthen limb structure to carry more fruit in years ahead.

Commercial citrus growers remove all fruit in the first 3 years of tree growth, and it’s recommended for home gardeners as well. Next year, year 4, you can leave all the fruit on if you want.

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What would one do to strengthen limb structure. I ended up pruning a branch that was hanging on the ground after it fruited this past season as most of the fruits ended up molding due to constant contact with the ground.

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Nothing I can think other than to let it grow and allow limbs to increase in diameter and strength with age.

I just prune off lower climbs like you did so they don’t contact the ground or I remove fruit from the lower limbs until the branches grow thick enough to support at least some fruit without touching the ground.

Pruning fruit trees and thinning fruit (removing excess small fruit) to support the remaining fruit and increase size of the harvested fruit is the norm in fruit tree production - it shouldn’t concern you to do this.

Now that said, I just read this from an LSU AgCenter article on citrus “Avoid pruning low branches. You want to keep as much foliage on the tree including lower branches that hit the ground. They provide wintertime protection and better maintain radiant heat from the soil.” That makes sense at least in theory but you can still remove small fruit on lower branches without removing the branches, and I personally don’t let citrus limbs/branches contact the ground - if and when they do, I prune them.