Seed and Bean

Organic supermarket lemons...a far cry from the 'real' thing.

My friend, Lisa, has been putting to good use the lemon tree I left her.

When we lived in Austin, we used to own a dwarf Meyer lemon tree, a small citrus cultivar thought to be a cross between a lemon and a Mandarin orange that produces juicy, thin-skinned, sweeter-than-regular lemons.  If the fruit wasn’t enough pleasure, the (mostly) evergreen tree would produce spectacular tiny, white blooms in the spring that scented the entire back garden in a sweet, delicate aroma.  For a while, the sheer novelty of this northerner picking lemons from her own tree was enough to give the resultant olive oil & lemon juice dressings an ambrosial quality but soon enough I was wondering what else this fruit could do.  I’m not much of a baker, so it seemed a waste to use the fruit in a tart or cake that I would probably mess up, and I wanted to use it in an unusual way, expressive of how I thought of this lovely little tree.

An edition of The Herb Companion magazine brought me the inspiration I was looking for - an article on herbal liqueurs.  I chose two using lemons – Italian herb and rosemary & lemon - and, because I had a bumper crop of basil that year, decided to try the basil liqueur, as well.  After many weeks of anticipation (and shaking and smelling and salivating), the taste testing ensued.  The Italian herb liqueur came out a clear winner; the variety of ingredients produced a layered flavor, more complex and interesting than the one note flavors of the other two, especially with the overwhelming sweetness from the sugar syrup (I’d definitely half the sugar in the recipes).

I’d like to try growing a Meyer lemon tree here in Edmonton – wouldn’t it make an eye-catching houseplant?

I didn’t have much trouble growing it in Austin in a large (20 inch diameter) pot.  After planting it in a good-quality soil mix created for vegetable gardens, I top-dressed it with an inch of compost every year, fertilized it 2 or 3 times per growing season with fish fertilizer, watered it every week (more or less depending on dormancy and weather), mulched it with wine corks, and dealt with the few aphids with insecticidal soap.  Here, since it would spend most of its life inside, I’ll need a soil-less mix to mitigate the chances of disease and insect problems.  I imagine I’ll need to fit a floor lamp with a grow bulb since it won’t get enough sun (I don’t have an accessible south-facing window), and I’ll need to mist it frequently because of the dry indoor air.  When it blooms, in order to guarantee fruit, I’ll pretend I’m a bee and pollinate the flowers with a little brush.  It won’t be low care but being able to pick lemons from my own tree again would be well worth the effort.