GROWING MEYER LEMON IN CONTAINERS

a prolific lemon variety that makes delicious lemonade's let's look at growing the Meyer lemon so you can buy your Meyer lemon tree in this five gallon container in most gardening stores you can either get them in five or 15 gallon containers and this is the improved Meyer lemon tree the improved Meyer lemon is resistant to the crystals of iris and this is a very good tree to grow in containers because it's a dwarf tree so the dwarf improved Meyer lemon tree is what you should be looking for when you go to your garden store now most home improvement stores like Home Depot and Lowe's will carry this tree you can also buy them in Costco for a great price the container that we are using here is enough so that it has a little bit of soil under the roots and then you just put your plant inside that container so you try to fill the container till the pot fits perfectly the one that you are looking at right now is an 18 inch container 18 inches in diameter body 10 inches in height and then what you do is just make sure you have enough soil and then just take the plant out of your container and then just put it inside the container that you're growing in now I do not recommend that you grow any tree including lemon trees from seeds because the plants will not be healthy they will not produce a lot of fruits so your best of getting a nice grafted tree from your local garden store they are not really expensive they are pretty cheap the citrus trees especially if you have a Costco near your place you can get them for about twenty dollars in a five-gallon container which is a great deal in my opinion because they will start producing fruits right away and then what you do is just fill around the plant with some soil now the mix I'm using here is a mix of peat moss compost and perlite I did not have enough perlite so I added a little bit but as you can see here it makes a good mix you can even use some potting soil if you have some potting mix bag potting mix you can use that as well and that should give you a good start for your citrus plant now some people prefer using a lighter in a more porous mix you can do that by mixing bark perlite and compost here once the tree is ready at setting nicely in the container all you do is just water the plant and at this stage I don't recommend that you add fertilizers if your potting mix contains fertilizers that's fine give it about a day or two to settle in and then you can add a liquid fertilizer you can use a water soluble fertilizer which is salt based or you can use an organic fertilizer that will break up over a period of time now what I am doing here is I'm just trying to make sure that the plant is as centered as possible and then I am trying to push the soil in from all the sides so how you plant your container how you plant your plant when you get it is very important so we just make sure that the soil is nice and compact around the plant and that should give you a good start and once this is done your next step is to water the plant make sure you give it a nice drench is make sure you soak it very well from all sides and that there are no air pockets that's very important you can then keep your container in a nice sunny location the Meyer lemon tree needs about six hours of Sun a day to produce good fruits and here you can see some yellowing of leaves and this is either because we kept the plant in a very sunny location where it got a lot of Sun and it got some sunburn which is quite possible within the first few days of keeping your plant because it's a change for the client from a shaded nursery to this sunny location but you still need about six hours of Sun a day and as long as you're giving good water to the plants they should recover pretty well and that's what happened to our plant and as you can see here the plant actually started producing very soon you can see the mild lemon fruit here the lemons are very good-looking and the leaves have greened up as well so as long as you add some good fertilizer and make sure that you water the plant well your plant should recover very quickly from yellowing of leaves and the plant is a vigorous grower as you can see here it's grown quite vigorously and at this stage you can see the lemon it's quite large the Meyer lemon plant particulars large sized lemons and here you can see we're harvesting our first Meyer lemon it's a pretty decently sized lemon the Meyer lemon is actually a cross between a lemon and a mandarin orange so it looks pretty large and it's got a very sweet taste and now let's cut open one Meyer lemon to show you how it looks like now Meyer lemons were first introduced to the United States from China in the early 20th century by Frank Meyer from which it got its name the Meyer lemon and today's Meyer lemon trees are a hybrid that are released to the University of California and this is an amazing tasting lemon it's not tart as the other regular lemons that you get so it's not soured it doesn't have a tart taste but it has a more of a sweet taste it does have seeds as you can see here but because of its sweet taste it makes great lemonade you can grow this lemon at your home and surprise your guests with some delicious tasting lemonade's when I tried the lemonade that was made from this lemon I was completely blown away the taste is just so amazing it's a very mild and a very nice tasting lemon so those of you who don't like hot lemonade you get that weird feeling around your teeth when you drink a lemonade you should love this lemon this lemon makes great lemonade which is sweet and not very tart and that's the best use of the Meyer lemon and as you can see here the plant will keep growing this is the second year of planting and the plant has produced more flowers and as the plant grows it will keep producing more and more flowers and more and more fruits and this is one of the best plants you can grow in a container the dwarf Meyer improved lemon and for those of you who are looking to grow this in your balcony or patio this is a great lemon variety to grow or of all the other lemon varieties available so each lemon has its own place we saw the Bears or the Persian lime tree which produces lines that are great for cooking because they are taught and the Meyer improved lemon produces lemon that are great for making lemonade's you can even make cocktails you can even use it for cooking if you like mild tasting lemon so it's a pretty versatile lemon plant that has a lot of uses and as you can see here I did have to transplant this plant into a larger container and while I transferred this plant into a larger container I use the faster draining mix and so far it's been okay I'm not very happy with the fast cleaning mix just because you have to add fertilizer very often the mix which includes the woodchips which is wood bark peat moss and compost and perlite so as you can see here the plant has grown very well now and I will shortly show you how to prune this plant but even if you don't prune your plant you let it grow for a few years and then prune it you're okay and this is a demonstration of the pruning technique you don't have to prune very hard let's make sure you give a nice shape to the plant remove any stems that are crossing over to the other side and interrupting with the growth of the plant or stems that are shading the plant so overall it's very easy to prune this lemon tree pruning Meyer lemons is just a matter of keeping the plant in good shape making sure you don't have any dead leaves our dead branches now since I'm growing this in a container I wanted to grow straight up and not grow very wide so that it's easier to maintain the plant so depending on your goals you can shape your lemon tree to the size and shape you desire and that's all there is to pruning the lemon tree you can do it anytime between fall through spring so there we have it folks that was our episode on growing the meyer lemon tree this is a great lemon tree to grow in containers and I highly recommend that you try growing this lemon tree at home do let us know if you grow lemons and which are your favorite varieties and whether you grow the meyer lemon tree see you again soon happy gardening