Try growing Meyer's lemon at home
Among homemade citrus fruits, Meyer's lemon is considered the most unpretentious to the conditions of detention. A short bush growing in pots was discovered by the naturalist Meyer in China. This is the name of a lemon - Meyer or Chinese. Meyer's lemon fits well as a flower in small spaces. The plant is very decorative, has dark leaves, at the same time fruits of different ripening periods and flowers. Lemons ripen juicy, of a peculiar taste, rounded. It is believed that this variety is a hybrid created by nature by crossing a lemon and an orange.
How to grow lemon at home and achieve fruiting
It is very important to comply with the conditions for keeping lemon. With deviations, he will begin to rebel, shedding foliage. Having 10 healthy, ripe leaves allows the indoor lemon to feed one fruit. And the more leaves on a tree, the more harvest it can give. But with negligence in care, the plant will shed flowers and ovaries, which will upset households.
Agricultural technology of Chinese lemon at home
If the apartment has an insulated balcony, then the content of the Chinese lemon is simplified. It is this sort of lemons that are bred in the southern regions of the country in open ground with a little insulation. For vegetation in spring, the temperature should not be higher than 18 degrees. Otherwise, the ovaries will crumble, and the plant will slow down.
If you put a room lemon with pouring fruits outside in the summer or in the garden, the fruits will crumble. The tree is painfully experiencing a sharp change in the situation.
The best thing would be to ensure the lemon is kept at an even temperature, about 12-140 Happy winter. As soon as the temperature is about the same on the balcony, move the lemon there until autumn. In autumn, it is impossible to bring a tree into a warm room right away - it will drop its leaves. It is necessary to change the temperature of the content gradually, allowing the earth to warm up. If the adaptation is successful, the leaves on the bush will remain.
The plant is demanding to create favorable conditions:
- lighting and correct placement;
- creating temperature conditions;
- humidity regime and quality of irrigation water;
- regular top dressing and soil quality.
Caring for indoor lemon is more difficult. He needs to find a bright place, but at the same time prevent overheating. The higher the ambient temperature, the more the plant needs watering and spraying. In summer, it is normal to moisten the leaves in the morning and in the evening, but so that the sun's rays on the drops are not focused, and a burn does not turn out. You also need to water the pot twice. Soft warm water is poured over until a clod of earth gets wet and the water begins to filter through the drainage hole. In winter, watering is reduced in the care of lemon, the leaves are not moistened.
It is necessary to strive to create lighting for indoor lemon about 12 hours all year round. With a long day, the leaf mass grows intensively. When short, the plant sheds its leaves and can get sick.
If watering is plentiful, there is a risk that the soil will be compacted and the water jet will flow out where there is less resistance. Lack of water will lead to yellowing and shedding of leaves. Therefore, up to five years, the plant is annually transferred into a large container. If the roots have not entangled a clod of earth, a transplant is not required. Later, the top layer of the soil is changed annually, if possible, the lemon is transplanted into a fresh substrate.
A rapidly developing plant needs to be fed with a complex composition mineral fertilizers... The solution is introduced two hours after the morning watering of the soil.
The main rule is that Mayer's lemon does not like shocks. He needs even conditions of detention, a stable placement with a small rotation on the axis, for uniform illumination, and no drafts.
Why does a lemon need pruning?
In order to create a tree, it is required to form a plant from an early age. If growth is not regulated, the plant tends to rise. By means of multilevel crown formation, conditions are created for obtaining a leafy, compact, dwarf plant.
Annual spring pruning, summer pinching, and light branch removal during harvest are essential to harvest indoor lemon in your home. Flower buds are formed on new shoots, the laying of a future harvest takes place. On young plants, the number of buds is manually adjusted. An adult tree sheds excess color by itself, determining the load.
Even before the first flowering, the bush is formed in several stages:
- A young plant of the first year of life with a height of more than 20 cm is pruned, leaving 6 lower leaves. After a while, several new branches will grow on the sides, one of them will be the central one.
- After waiting until several upper branches grow up to 20-25 cm, they are cut again, like the first central one. Later, after regrowth, branches of the second order are formed.
- The branches of the third order are formed in the same way. As a rule, flower buds begin to form after the third pruning.
How Chinese lemon is propagated
There are several techniques for planting lemon and speeding up your first harvest. The most common breeding method is cuttings. The twigs cut in spring are full-fledged cuttings for rooting. The lower cut must be necessarily oblique, under the lower kidney. The leaves are pruned so that evaporation is less and the stalk will receive nutrition and will not dry out.
You can root the stalk in water, or in a greenhouse with damp sand, but the stalk should not touch the film or the walls of the vessel. A collus forms in the lower part, roots grow from it. If rooting goes under the jar, spray the cutting.
You can grow a seedling from a drupe, but if you need to get a fruit tree, you will need a graft from varietal lemon. It is done on a two or three year old seedling by means of splitting, by cutting by the bark or by simple copulation.
A sand-peat mixture is used for rooting cuttings. Young seedlings need fertile soil. Its composition:
- sand - 1 part;
- humus - 1 part;
- sod - 2 parts;
- sheet land - 1 part.
For an adult plant, more sod land and a little clay are added to the substrate. When creating a mixture, they add ash... The drainage layer consists of expanded clay and charcoal.
Having fulfilled all the conditions for keeping Meyer's lemon in the room, you can expect the return from the citrus tree in the form of delicious fragrant fruits.