I spent the first part of my lunch break today writing about how incredibly lame the whole auto industry bailout seems to me. But instead I think I am going to write about something that I take great personal satisfaction in… the ripening of my very first homegrown LEMON.
This is exciting to me, not because I particularly like lemons, but just because I like trees/plants and growing stuff in general. There really isn’t anything out of the ordinary, other than getting the plant in the first place…just the right kind of soil mix and enough water to keep the plant alive but not enough that the roots rot from staying wet too long. Also, for the record, lemons ooze sap like it’s going out of style.
Just as they would in their native habitat, the lemon ripened in late november/early december as they require an exceptionally long growing season – the reason they can’t be grown here (that, and the trees will not tolerate sub zero temps). At any rate, I have not yet found a use for the tree-ripened lemon, so if anyone has ideas let me know.
Here are some earlier posts about this particular lemon growing experiment:
Flowering stage – scroll towards the bottom of page
Juvenile stage
The other lemons and ALL of the limes eventually fell off the tree for some reason, but this one pressed on. I was also dismayed when the last of the 10 or so giant sequoia seedlings succumbed to damping off disease.