I’ve had a Meyer lemon tree for about three years. In spring of 2018, it flowered like crazy and set a bunch of fruit. Though it was a small tree, I harvested eight big lemons and made a delicious pie with them. Success!
Lemon flowers are very pretty and have a shocking fragrance. The yellow supplies is the pollen.
In 2019, points did not go so properly. The lemon tree flowered in spring, nonetheless then dropped all of its flowers and produced no fruit. It spent the summer season open air (as a result of it usually does), then flowered as soon as extra in late fall. No fruit, which did not shock me on account of citrus desires a great deal of photo voltaic and even in my south window, it’s pretty darkish in Minnesota from November via March.
Each week or so previously, my lemon tree started to flower as soon as extra—abundantly. The timing is right so I decided to help the tree alongside to get some fruit. Meyer lemons are “self-pollinating,” which suggests you don’t need a second tree to get fruit. The pollen on the tree will cling to the stigmas in numerous flowers, which creates the little lemons. Exterior, wind and bugs will do the pollinating for you, nonetheless inside it might need assist.
Be the Bee: Lemon Tree Pollination
The method is simple. Get a small paint brush or Q-tip swab and rub it into the flowers which have plenty of pollen on their anthers. (These are male flowers.) Remember to get a variety of the yellow pollen grains in your brush or swab. Then go to a flower that has the bulbous stigma (moreover known as a pistil). Gently contact the sting of the swab or brush on the stigma. You’ll want to see some grains of pollen present on the stigma after you would have pollinated. Proceed to try this as long as the plant is flowering. Wait to see the little lemons start rising. In case you receive pollination and are lucky, these little lemons will most likely be giant delicious fruit in about eight months.
The {photograph} is a bit blurry, nonetheless you can see the grains of pollen on the stigma.
My lemon tree will go open air some time in mid-May. Temperatures should be persistently about 50 ranges for a lemon to be happy. I’ll even be together with some fertilizer to the plant, which desires amount of nitrogen nonetheless not loads phosphorus or potassium. Inside the three-plus years it has been on this pot, I’ve solely added fish emulsion. Lastly, come fall, I’ll be re-potting my tree. Whereas lemon timber can develop properly in a fairly small pot, they do like up to date soil every few years.
For further on rising lemons, do this superb bulletin from the Wisconsin grasp gardeners and this step-by-step pollination info. I’ll allow you to perceive what number of lemons I recuperate from on my Instagram account.
