What's up everyone, Kevin
here, we've done it again. We have a another fruit tree. This
time we're growing it in a container. We have the rare, the prized,
the delicate Meyer lemon. In fact, it's an Improved Meyer
lemon. So this variety of lemon, it's prized amongst chefs.
It's prized amongst gardeners, mostly because it's not often sold
at a grocery. It's hard to find. So if you can grow it all the better. Now the thing about is
when it first came about, it was really susceptible to a
certain type of citrus virus, which has since been bred
out in this improved version. This one came to me from my friends over
at Fast Growing Trees and I mean to be able to ship a Meyer lemon
that looks this beautiful, it's a feat in and of itself. So thanks
to them for sending it out. Today, let's go ahead and talk about
how to grow it in a container. So if you're growing a
Meyer lemon in a container, you have to get even more
particular about the soil. So the thing that citrus really does
not prefer is what you'll call wet feet. So it doesn't want to have the soil be
overly moist for too long a period of time. And so actually a cactus and succulent
mix can be a really good option when mixed with a little bit of potting soil
and we'll of course add a little bit of fertilizer as well. So it's, it's surprising that that would be the
mix cause you think a tree you put cactus mix, doesn't make a lot of sense. But citrus really seems to perform well
with it and it's recommended all the time. And it's something that I'm
definitely gonna experiment with. So I have the cactus and succulent mix. I have a little bit of potting mix and
let's talk container. The container, you want a container that is deeper than
it is wide because if left to its own devices, if you put it in a
really big container, it's a tree. It's going to get massive. And so I've selected this kind
of funky little container here. I actually grew a a Chinese five color
pepper in this a few years back and it was beautiful and now it's going to
get repurposed for our lemon tree. Now it does not have drainage holes so
I have to be very careful about watering it, but it's a beautiful container and
it fits the purposes of the Meyer lemon. So we're going to go ahead and mix
in our cactus and succulent mix. Boom. That's probably quite a bit already cause
what we want to do when we are potting it up is we are going to take it out of
its pot and make sure that it lines up well. Now when I say lines up, well what I mean is that you want the
surface of the soil in the pot to be right about an inch or so below. So we already have a little too
much in here at least in the center. But before we do that, let's go
ahead and inspect our root system. So we don't want any root circling and
it looks like on this plant we're in a pretty good spot. You
can see the bottom here. It's really not that bad at all. In fact, I would say this may have been shipped
out at the exact right time cause you're starting to see a bit of
circling around the bottom, but it's really not that bad. So I'm just going to lightly
just loosen this up a little bit, tease it open. And I think
a lot of people get very, very sensitive about, uh, messing
with their plants, root system. But for some reason we're okay
pruning the top of our plants, but not the bottom, right? And it
doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Yes. Are there plants that are more sensitive
on the roots? Obviously, right. There's, there's a wide range of,
of plant tolerances out there, but it's really a good idea,
especially when growing in a container, especially when growing a plant
that's sensitive to having wet feet. So we're just going to get this going
a little bit and we may have to do a little excavation. And honestly, the roots roots have a unique
smell compared to most roots. It's probably weird for me
to go down and smell them, but honestly it smells cool and they
have a bit of a yellowish color to them. Okay. So we've teased the
root ball open a little bit. Now what we're going to do is
just make way for our Meyer and placement in a pot is, is
important because that's where it is. Once it's there, that's where it
is. Uh, so we're going to do this and we'll scoop this back in in a second, but if we were to do it right there, that's actually looking like
a really good position for it. So that is absolutely perfect.
And let's go ahead and fill it in. Now, before I actually backfill,
I'm going to lightly fertilize. So this is a custom mix of fertilizer
that I've made. It's got bone meal, blood meal, chicken
droppings, chicken manure, as well as a little bit
of kelp meal in there. So I'm doing a light fertilization, especially into this right
around the planting hole. You don't have to worry so much about, um, fertilizing and sort of training
the plant to get used to that, uh, area around the root zone
because it's a container. This is the only place
that it's going to grow. If you're putting it in the ground, I might be a little more wary about
over fertilizing the, the hole, the planting hole. But we're in a good spot here giving it
a little bit of light fertilizer for its future life. Okay, now
we go ahead and backfill and as far as the soil and planting
conditions or in a good spot, and then we get to talk now about all
the other parts of Meyer lemon tree care. Okay, we're potted up. It's looking
really good as we water it in here, taking care not to over-water. Let's
talk about the other parts of its care. Now, when you're growing in a container, that means that if you're in a colder
zone, you can actually grow it indoors. So if you're growing it indoors, then you're going to want to put it
right up next to a South facing window as close as you possibly can because outdoors
in zones 8 to 10 it still wants eight plus hours of sunlight, right?
I'm here in San Diego in zone 10b. We are a citrus growing zone
and even a citrus growing city, so it's going to be perfect outdoors. Now what I will say is the best time to
plant is going to be in the beginning of spring, so late winter, early spring. As
soon as temperatures start to warm up, that's a good time to get it started, especially if you're planting it
in ground. I'm doing containers, but it would be the same principle
here. So as I water this in, we need to just make sure that we
talk a little bit about the pruning. Pruning is especially important when
growing in containers because you want to really manicure and sculpt the shape
of your Meyer lemon. Now again, this came from Fast Growing Trees so I
can already see some nice pruning and shaping cuts here. But there are a few general rules of
thumb when you're cleaning up your tree that you want to keep in mind. Tip number one for pruning is to remove
any branches that are non fruiting that are growing straight up. Obviously
there aren't any right now, and I can't even tell because
it's not even flowering, so I don't know which ones aren't fruiting
yet. But as that starts to happen, I can go ahead and make a scan. Your second pruning tip is going to be
to remove any branches that are crossing the plant. So let's say this one
ended up growing inwards like that, you're gonna want to remove that
or just growing inwards in general. Let's say I have this offshoot and it was
to send another one out right here and kind of go out in this direction. I may want to remove that and that's to
keep the interior of the plant nice and airy. Don't want little
pockets of crazy humidity. That's a breeding ground for disease
and rot and things like that. Our third pruning tip for the shape of
the plant is if you want to grow it in a tree-esque fashion rather than more
of like a shrubby type of thing, what you'll want to do is remove all the
growth that starts to shoot out as the seasons roll on from lower down on the
trunk so you can just clip that off. I do that with my Loquat tree out in
the front yard as well cause it wants to throw those low lying shoots out. Just take those off and it
still looks nice and manicured, especially if you're growing it
in a container and you know what? This is even a plant that you can use
an espalier-style pruning technique. You can actually flatten this plant
and put it up next against like a South facing window or on a flat trellis
and you can actually do it that way. It looks amazing, takes a lot of
time, but it does look amazing. Now the final tip is actually
when it starts to fruit, a pruning technique that you can use. What you can do is you can prune each
fruit cluster to either one or two fruits. Now it kind of seems like a shame
as it starts to throw out fruit. You're really excited. You have your first Meyer lemons and
maybe there's three or something on there. Then it seems like a shame to take
one off, but what you're doing there, it's very similar to other
principles in gardening. You are allowing the plant to put more
energy into less fruit so that the resulting fruit is going to be larger,
higher quality, the flavor's improved, et cetera. So hurts, but it
is a good tip. All right, let's talk about a couple of problems
that you're probably wondering about. So number one, it's not
flowering or producing fruit. Almost always that's a symptom
of not enough light, right? A lot of us try to grow our
citrus indoors. The sad truth is, unless you're providing
some kind of grow light, it's really going to be hard to
get a lot of fruit off of that. So if the case you really should consider
moving into a place with more sun. Yellowing leaves, that is going to be under watering
over-watering or not enough nitrogen. So you really have to troubleshoot and
figure out which one of those three problems it is. Unfortunately, under an over-watering kind of
present the same way in many plants. It's kind of an annoying thing. Uh, and the reason for that is because under
watering we know why there's not enough water in the soil and
it starts to struggle. But over-watering weirdly
enough causes the same thing. So it actually suffocates the roots and
then they're unable to transport water. So the leaves are actually still getting
under watered despite the soil being overwatered. And that's kind
of what's going on there. Your next problem is going
to be wilting leaves. Again, that's an over-watering
almost always issue. They're gonna sort of sag and
get a little bit of yellow, get a little bit sickly. So really the
best way to do that is the soil test. Stick your finger down a couple inches.
You want to make sure it's nice and dry. I wouldn't water this until the
soil's dry, especially in a container, especially a container
without drainage holes, uh, from wait until the soil is maybe
three inches dry or so, three, four inches and then you can
give it a nice little drink. Meyer lemons are an amazing
variety of citrus to grow. Highly encourage you to do it again, this one came from Fast Growing Trees
and it should probably bear fruit, maybe not this season. It might
need some time to establish. I might get lucky but definitely
next season and again, one of the best lemons that
you will ever, ever taste. This is part one in the
Meyer lemon growing series. So subscribe like comment and follow
along because all the different plants I grow here on Epic Gardening.
I do continual updates on, we did it with our dragon fruit.
That was a five part series. Potatoes are coming up. There's a
lot of things going on right now. Pineapple is another one that we're doing
a series on so you have to subscribe to know when the next one's
coming and it's plants, guys. The next one might be months away.
You never know. It might be next year, so you definitely have to subscribe. Good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
