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Meyer Lemon Trees

boostdemon

boostdemon

Any other pepper people out there that have success growing Meyer Lemon trees? I picked up an improved (grafted) Meyer shoot from Amazon in hopes i can have a few home grown lemons for cooking ingredients. I transplanted it into what is probably about a 4 gallon square pot full of pea gravel, perlite, and potting soil. I've been keeping it damp and given it a couple waterings of 5-1-1 fish fertilizer mix. So far it seems to be responding well. Anyone else have some info and tips? 
 
Unpacked from the post office 9/5/2014:
Meyer_Lemon_cutting.jpg

 
Update 12/17/2014:
DSF0704.jpg

 
The grafting healed up nicely 12/17/2014:
DSF0706.jpg
 
I grew one lemon and some key limes from seed. Citrus usually grow true. Another year or so and they should start flowering.
 
Nice start. I have been growing for 15 years. Usually get about 50-75 fruit from my container plant. 4' X 6'.
 
my Meyer Lemon is sitting in a window now with about 20 lemons getting ready to ripen. It seems to take forever. I live in the North East 
 
chsy83 said:
 
4'X6' size of container, or plant?
Click to expand...
 
lol i'm pretty sure thats plant size... 4 ft wide 6 ft tall. At least i hope so.
 
 
LUCKYDOG said:
my Meyer Lemon is sitting in a window now with about 20 lemons getting ready to ripen. It seems to take forever. I live in the North East 
Click to expand...
 
Any tricks on growing in a window? Mine is in front of a sliding glass door. I'm guessing you turn it every so often to get even growth?
 
boostdemon said:
 
lol i'm pretty sure thats plant size... 4 ft wide 6 ft tall. At least i hope so.
 
 
 
Any tricks on growing in a window? Mine is in front of a sliding glass door. I'm guessing you turn it every so often to get even growth?
Click to expand...
Yeah I just turn and keep moist - I bought the fertilizer sticks for fruit trees and it really took off this year. Im going to have to put in a new stick soon but was waiting for it to stop fruiting. I also hand pollinate the flowers indoors just by diddling with my finger. 
 
Meyers are some of the easiest citrus plants to grow. I've got two of them in my citrus collection.
Don't expect the lemons to taste like true lemons though. The juice is ok, but the peel has an aroma I really don't like.
 
Lemons don't grow true from seed by the way...
 
MarcV said:
Meyers are some of the easiest citrus plants to grow. I've got two of them in my citrus collection.
Don't expect the lemons to taste like true lemons though. The juice is ok, but the peel has an aroma I really don't like.
 
Lemons don't grow true from seed by the way...
Click to expand...
 
I would expect that the "improved" meyer lemons would, no? grafting is how all the citrus plants are duplicated with its parent plant characteristics - like apple trees.
 
No, grafting doesn't blend genes. The idea is to put a nice tasting fruit (or pretty, robust, decease resistant etc) on a strong root, capable of delivering lots of nutes to the fruit, usually also decease resistant.

So the seeds will be of the weak but nice tasting variety.. But it doesn't turn out remotely like it, because it usually has a much weaker root system. You're more likely to have flower drop, deceases, slow growth, small immature ripened fruits etc
 
MarcV said:
"improved" actually has nothing to do with fruit quality and is in my opinion not a well chosen name.
You can find more info here:
http://citruspages.free.fr/lemons.html#meyerii
http://citruspages.free.fr/lemons.html#impmeyer
 
Some citrus, like oranges, do come true from seed. Seeds from oranges are nucellar. They only contain genetic material from the mother plant, so they are actually clones of the mother plant.
Click to expand...
Oh interesting, so "Improved" is a clone of a meyer lemon that does not have Tristeza virus. 
 
 
 
Pfeffer said:
No, grafting doesn't blend genes. The idea is to put a nice tasting fruit (or pretty, robust, decease resistant etc) on a strong root, capable of delivering lots of nutes to the fruit, usually also decease resistant.

So the seeds will be of the weak but nice tasting variety.. But it doesn't turn out remotely like it, because it usually has a much weaker root system. You're more likely to have flower drop, deceases, slow growth, small immature ripened fruits etc
Click to expand...
...which is what i was thinking right? since i have a branch of an assumed "good tasting/producing" tree grafted to a root system+trunk, from the splice up I should have the characteristics of the branch not the roots... just like apples. Right?
 
@boostdemon, they will grow true in such a way that it's the same fruit, but it's not turning out the same as the motherplant.. you don't have the rootball to support it. Often you just get tiny fruits with extremely thick skin, poor (inmature)flavor. I realise it sounds contradictory, but I hope you get what I mean. You need the pers of the lower half to Come to the same result (that's the whole point of grafting). You'll get stuff like this;

http://m.9gag.com/gag/aG9pd5w/my-mom-tried-to-grow-a-lemon-tree-here-in-rainy-washington-state
 
Pfeffer said:
@boostdemon, they will grow true in such a way that it's the same fruit, but it's not turning out the same as the motherplant.. you don't have the rootball to support it. Often you just get tiny fruits with extremely thick skin, poor (inmature)flavor. I realise it sounds contradictory, but I hope you get what I mean. You need the pers of the lower half to Come to the same result (that's the whole point of grafting). You'll get stuff like this;

http://m.9gag.com/gag/aG9pd5w/my-mom-tried-to-grow-a-lemon-tree-here-in-rainy-washington-state
Click to expand...
 
I believe the caption on that photo explains why the fruit turned out that way.
 
Wiki: The trees thrive in a consistently sunny, humid environment with fertile soil and adequate rainfall or irrigation.
 
What's consistently sunny about "rainy Washington"?
 
Citrus trees hybridise very readily – depending on the pollen source, plants grown from a Persian lime's seeds can produce fruit similar to grapefruit. Thus all commercial citrus cultivation uses trees produced by grafting the desired fruiting cultivars onto rootstocks selected for disease resistance and hardiness.
 
The taxonomy and systematics of the genus are complex and the precise number of natural species is unclear, as many of the named species are hybrids clonally propagated through seeds (by apomixis), and there is genetic evidence that even some wild, true-breeding species are of hybrid origin.
 
But since theyre usually grown in huge orchards, they should grow true like isolated peppers. Commercial growers use grafted root stock because new trees are faster to produce and for the other above reasons.
 
Pfeffer said:
@boostdemon, they will grow true in such a way that it's the same fruit, but it's not turning out the same as the motherplant.. you don't have the rootball to support it. Often you just get tiny fruits with extremely thick skin, poor (inmature)flavor. I realise it sounds contradictory, but I hope you get what I mean. You need the pers of the lower half to Come to the same result (that's the whole point of grafting). You'll get stuff like this;

http://m.9gag.com/gag/aG9pd5w/my-mom-tried-to-grow-a-lemon-tree-here-in-rainy-washington-state
Click to expand...
 
I think the fruit shown here is not a lemon (too few segments for a lemon). It's more likely some type of limequat, a small, yellow citrus fruit with a lemon aroma. Limequats are intergeneric crosses between kumquat (fortunella species) and limes (citrus species).
able eye said:
 
I believe the caption on that photo explains why the fruit turned out that way.
 
Wiki: The trees thrive in a consistently sunny, humid environment with fertile soil and adequate rainfall or irrigation.
 
What's consistently sunny about "rainy Washington"?
 
Citrus trees hybridise very readily – depending on the pollen source, plants grown from a Persian lime's seeds can produce fruit similar to grapefruit. Thus all commercial citrus cultivation uses trees produced by grafting the desired fruiting cultivars onto rootstocks selected for disease resistance and hardiness.
 
The taxonomy and systematics of the genus are complex and the precise number of natural species is unclear, as many of the named species are hybrids clonally propagated through seeds (by apomixis), and there is genetic evidence that even some wild, true-breeding species are of hybrid origin.
 
But since theyre usually grown in huge orchards, they should grow true like isolated peppers. Commercial growers use grafted root stock because new trees are faster to produce and for the other above reasons.
Click to expand...
 
The thing with citrus hybrids is, they are usually propagated as F1 hybrids. If you propagate those by seed you may get something similar to the mother plant but not the same, unless the seeds are nucellar, which happens often with citrus. The only reliable way to obtain trees with the same fruit quality of the original plant is by grafting, which is indeed also the fastest way to get a fruiting plant.
 
Which citrus fruits will come true to type from seed?
 
Tom McClendon writes in Hardy Citrus for the South East:
“Most common citrus such as oranges, grapefruit, lemons and most mandarins are polyembryonic and will come true to type. Because most citrus have this trait, hybridization can be very difficult to achieve. In the late 19th century, when the first attempts at controlled hybridization were attempted by the United States Department of Agriculture in Florida, Walter T. Swingle reported that more than 1,100 sweet orange seeds pollinated with trifoliate orange pollen were required to produce the first citranges, and seven of these came from a single fruit. The good news is that polyembryony helps stabilize varieties, which allows seeds to be passed around with little chance of spreading diseases such as viruses. This unique characteristic allows amateurs to grow citrus from seed, something you can’t do with, say, apples.”
 
Highly polyembryonic citrus types
Will mostly produce nucellar polyembryonic seeds that will grow true to type.
  1. key lime
  2. citranges
  3. kumquats
  4. rough lemon
  5. Palestine lime (Indian sweet lime)
  6. calamondin
  7. grapefruit
  8. sweet oranges  (Blonde, navel and blood oranges)
  9. ‘Nasnaran’ mandarin
  10. Shekwasha’ mandarin
  11. Cleopatra’ mandarin
  12. Trifoliate orange
 
Sadly here in St Louis, anything tropical has to be potted up and brought indoors. My Improved Meyer lemon has a million buds and blooms in its two gallon pot right now. I usually get few lemons, but overall the squirrels reak havoc on the tree and most of the fruit gets knocked off.  There are very prone to getting scale.  It's a never ending saga indoors.
 
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