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GROWING LEMON TREES
(Keywords: GROWING LEMON TREES, meyer lemon trees, planting lemon tree, grow a lemon tree )
I particularly like the Meyer lemon trees because they go on bearing month after month after month. I chose this pic of a lemon tree, not the most dramatic, because you can see the mixed yellow and green fruit. The improved Meyer lemon tree is the best if you're planting lemon trees.
I'll confess it up front: A lemon tree bears well, if you care for it and plant it in a hole filled with compost, for about thirty years. Our two lemon trees are 28 years old, a Meyer and a Eureka... and are looking very tatty. So I stole this pic from the net!
Googs, the source of all knowledge!, tells me that Meyer lemon trees are a Chinese cross between a lemon and a mandarin, hence it is less tart that the Eureka. It was brought to the USA by one Frank Meyer in 1908 from China. Its bright yellow fruit and sublimely scented flowers makes it a great favourite as a indoor potted plant too. Ours is located outside our bedroom window, and the scent in the Spring...
"Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat."
Amazing how wrong a guy can get it! Both with his girl and the lemon fruit "impossible to eat".
PLANTING LEMON TREE
If you want a heavy-bearing fruit tree, then break your back and dig a deep hole. It should be square, not round, so that the roots go outwards and not just down.
It took me three hours hard labour to dig this hole and fill it again with sticks, compost, subsoil, more compost, lime... replacing the topsoil.
Dig a BIG SQUARE hole
For more details about how big the hole should be, and what goes in the bottom of the crater, follow this link:
TREE PLANTING HELP ...
SUB-SOIL
On top of your old half-rotten sticks and the first layer of compost replace most of the subsoil. In my case it's this orange clay. Hard as rock, hence the importance of digging a deep hole to give your Meyer lemon tree a good start. Then, provided you have good root stock, you can grow a lemon tree that will provide bountiful fruit for thirty years and more.
"Wallnuts and pears, you plant for your heirs." Lemon trees too! At 62, I wonder how many years of lemon juice I'll get to enjoy?
Growing lemon trees usually require LIME
Particularly in high rainfall regions the soil is too acid, so a good dusting of agricultural lime is a good idea. I can't tell you just how essential, but I believe it's helpful to your growing lemon trees.
Now the order isn't too important. I don't put the lime in contact with the compost, as I fear the earthworms may turn up their toes, so I'll cover the lime with the first layer of topsoil.
Grow a lemon tree - replace the topsoil
The subsoil should have gone deeper in the crater - but there will inevitably some over, which I use to seal the compost pile - and then the topsoil goes back where it belongs. At the top!
Growing lemon trees need COMPOST
If you have a small garden that's highly visible to the neighbours, then I recommend a
COMPACT COMPOST TUMBLER
but I'm privileged to have a very large garden, so we have four different compost piles of various sorts. One for old sticks, one for the prime garden waste like grass cuttings and kitchen refuse, one for large stalks (like from growing corn, or mealies as we call them), another for rough stuff that might well contain weed seeds and other suspect garden waste that you might not want to spread back into the garden.
This is the third, or the fourth layer of compost?, I can't remember even though I started planting lemon tree yesterday. Bit of senile decay setting in? I'll have to eat more fatty fish! Did you know that Omega-3 has a very beneficial effect your grey matter? That's the part of the brain where all the data is stored. The hard-drive... starve yourself of the right fatty acids and Alzheimers and senile decay is inevitable.
FISH OIL HEALTH BENEFITS ...
Now replace the rest of the topsoil. Heap it up slightly as it will settle with time as that organic matter decays back into sublime earth for your growing lemon trees.
BIRTHDAY GIFT IDEA: Meyer Lemon trees ?
Actually I got sneaky. The good wife had to buy her own Meyer lemon tree. My birthday gift was to dig the pit! Three hours hard labour from start to finish. She can plant the tree! Tomorrow, hopefully I'll have a picture of the finished Growing Lemon Trees product.
Oh, by the way, if you are growing lemon trees commercially, and have unlimited space then they should be 25 feet apart. For the home garden 15-20 feet is probably adequate. Our 30-year old Meyer lemon has grown to about 3 metres tall.
Now we sit back and wait a couple years. Then I'll probably pull the old lemon trees out. I might be tempted to plant another Eureka lemon tree, but I don't find it as juicy, and it doesn't bear as long in the season. They also seem to be susceptible to drought, the fruit may have almost no juice in it. Instead I've just put the first lime tree.
UPDATE
Just occasionally it pays to procrastinate. She who must be obeyed had other things on her mind yesterday, and the lemon tree, still very pretty, remained in protection. We had a terrible hail storm last night... I wonder how the other young trees coped?
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