How to grow lemons

Which variety?

Eureka lemons give year round fruit – a thick skinned, tough cold and heat resistant lemon. Most other lemons give most of their fruit in winter. Lisbon has the most beautiful flavour and aroma.

How to grow

Lemons need sun, frost protection and dislike wind, relatively rich soils and a reasonably constant supply of moisture (otherwise you tend to get fruit drop or dead trees).

They also need LOTS of feeding – use well made compost, a complete citrus food or Dynamic Lifter at least twice each summer. I also give ours a dose of seaweed spray once a year. Plants in pots need to be fed once a month while they are growing strongly. Mulch well – they’re shallow rooted.

NB: If citrus leaves stay yellow even after feeding, look for scale, or use a complete citrus food and seaweed spray together in case they have a trace element deficiency. Citrus leaves often look yellowish in cold weather. (They’re trying to decide whether to die or not).

In arid or drought prone areas try rough or bush lemons, also called citronelles. You get lots of peel, sweetish pulp, lots of seeds – but they do survive. They used to be used as grafting stock for other citrus, so when the graft above dies the rough lemon took over. They grow very fast from seed. In very dry areas mulch citrus well and grow among other greenery to shelter them. Our area is drought prone: I grow ours surrounded thickly by deciduous trees. These shade them in summer. In winter the citrus get the sunlight when they need it.

The main pest is scale (they look just like tiny scale on the leaves). Use an oil spray like Pestoil when the temperature is under 24°C; stink bugs are attracted by rotting ripe fruit and so are fruit fly. (In bad fruit fly areas you can net trees in tubs). If your citrus trees don’t put out new leaves during most of summer – or if the new leaves are darker than the old leaves – the poor thing is hungry. Feed it. Most people starve their citrus. (The rotters!)

Harvest

We have lemons on our trees all year round – constant picking means we don’t have one great big ‘flush’ of fruit and then none for the rest of the year. But lemons are best in winter – soft and sweet.

Now to Love

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