Meyer lemon

I have had this plant for years, and have gotten lemons before, but I was better at using Miracid this summer, and have the biggest lemon yet. The flowers have a wonderful scent as well.

Susan in Minneapolis

Susan - could you tell us more about your Meyer Lemon? I have a small one, purchased from Logee's last summer. It is doing fine, but still a baby.

What temperature do you supply the plant with in winter? How high is your humidity?

My understanding is that citrus trees, grown indoors, require rather cool temperatures.

Kevin

Kevin,
In the winter, I keep it in a sunroom, where the daytime temps range from about 62 degrees F (no sun) to about 70 (with sun). Nights are probably about 58 degrees or so. The humidity is somewhat higher than normal house humidity because I have quite a few plants in the room. This one, like most of mine, do their best growing in the summer when they are outside. But it seems as if the cooler night temps (or maybe shorter days?) cause it to flower in the fall and winter, and the fruit takes a long time to grow and ripen, but this may be just the conditions I have that aren't ideal. And I often have a problem of squirrels taking the fruit, or taking a bite out of them.

Are you able to put yours outside for the summer? Have you had any flowers yet?

I have a young tree that I have grown from a seed of the parent, but I don't know for sure if it will produce a Meyer plant, since I don't know if it is a hybrid variety.

Susan

my friend has one of these, gives it no special care and does not have a very well lit place for it. Despite this, it blooms and has several lemons. She does give some kind of blue-liquid fertilizer

Very nice Meyer Lemon tree you have there Susan! I bought a small one at Wal-Mart last spring, with the intention of planting it in the backyard! My neighbors have one they planted about 3 years ago and it is huge now .... a beautiful tree! I left mine in the pot sitting out in the back driveway ... and completely forgot about it! No water and no rain - poor baby died ... I wonder why?

Susan - how lucky you are to have a sunroom! I have not had any flowers or fruit yet, since my plant is still quite young. I will shift it on to a larger pot in the spring, and give it a holiday outdoors for the summer.

I'm a gardening author, currently writing about window gardens in winter. Meyer Lemon is one of my projects. I'm experimenting with its culture at a south-facing window in a cool room (58-65 degrees).

Are the flowers "free" with their fragrance - can you smell them when you enter the room or must your nose be on the blossoms? Are you fertilizing with something acidic and what growing medium do you use?

Kevin

This message was edited Dec 6, 2007 8:22 AM

Hi Kevin,

I would say that the smell doesn't pervade the room, but my sense of smell is not the greatest, so I'm probably not a good judge. I fertilize with Miracid; I see that the leaves get pale when I do not fertilize enough. The plant seems very thirsty all year.

I think that blossoms that occur indoors need hand pollination if you want fruit. I think this is because when the plant is outside, either insects or the breeze provides the pollination, and in the house, you have to be the bee or breeze.

I have many house plants, and have had them for a long time, and as a result, I have chronic problems with soft scale, never totally eliminating it. The Meyer lemon is a huge attraction for scale, so be vigilant about that.

Do you know if the Meyer is grown outside in a warm climate if it becomes a "normal" sized tree? Indoors, is it confinement to a pot that miniaturizes it, even though the fruit is normal size? Just curious about this, since people who grow grapefruit trees from seed in a pot never seem to get blossoms, and I wonder how this works with the Meyer lemon.

Good luck with your tree, and your writing.

Susan

Susan - Thanks for the scent info.

Meyer is a dwarf - maximum height is three feet. It would probably grow larger in the open garden, but I don't think it is like a dwarf apple tree that reverts to standard size when the root graft is buried.

Was your plant a baby when you bought it, or was it old enough to bloom?

Good to know about scale. How do you keep it under control?

Kevin,

Thanks for your info.

As best as I can remember, I ordered a green twig many years ago that became the tree I have now. I think I remember that it had blooms after a few years, and some tiny fruit, but didn't produce anything that ripened for a number of years, until the tree was large enough to support the fruit.

Because I am plagued by scale in my plant collection, I made the decision to use a systemic, which then means that the fruit should not be eaten. I found the fruit was not tart enough anyway, so this is no great loss. When I first discovered the scale, however, it was mostly on the stems, which is quite unlike scale that appears on most plants. It didn't seem to harm the plant, but made a sticky mess. The stems were hugely covered with scale before I realized what was happening. When I first saw it, I laboriously wiped every stem repeatedly with 1/2 isopropyl alcohol and 1/2 water, and reapplied it for weeks. I think that worked, but was very labor intensive. But it also didn't prevent a re-infestation the next summer outside.

Do you think the young plant I have which I started from a seed from the parent will be a true Meyer? It is about 14 inches tall, so I would expect it to start flowering soon, if it ever will. Also, I think in the citrus farming industry, trees grow too old and die after a relatively short lifespan. Do you think this will happen to a Meyer as a houseplant? I have also grown some small trees from cuttings, but rooting them takes time and can be tricky, and I don't have any now.

Susan

Meyer lemons aren't supposed to be tart, the whole point of them is that they're sweeter and not tart like other lemons. If you want tart lemons, you should get a regular one not the Meyer one. I also think they'll last a while in a home garden setting--at a citrus farm they're all about lots and lots of fruit production so they might retire their trees when they get a bit older and aren't producing quite as much fruit anymore. But for the home gardener, you can keep citrus trees for many years and get fruit from them.

As far as coming true from seed...Tradewinds fruit says that most of the time they come true or at least fairly close to the parent, so there's a good chance your seedling will be very close to if not exactly identical to the parent.
http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/meyer_lemon.htm

Here is a Meyer flower bud and the resulting little lemon. This is my second growing season with a plant bought in a big box store. Great and interesting house plant that gets outside in summer.

The little lemon at about three weeks.

docgipe,

They are great pictures, especially with the drops of moisture. Thanks for sharing.

Now, if only we had digital scent sharing to click on to smell the flower!

Susan

Docgipe - I have Susan's growing conditions, what are yours??? Were your first blooms in the second season?

My first blooms this year followed this fall's return to the house. The pictures are about a week old now. I brought it in about November 15th. Zone 4-5

My one lemon harvest came off early this past summer. It was a big nice juicy fruit nearly twice the size of a major market lemon.