Meyer Lemons’ Journey

 

 

I chanced upon a post by Ms. Yong Kit Chin on May 16 2015 about growing Meyer Lemons from seeds.

 

 

These were her advice on how to germinate Meyer lemon seeds :

Peel off the hard shell covering the seed. 

Use a nail clipper to pull the husk off.

This makes it easier to sprout. 

Soak, peel, sandwich seeds in wet kitchen paper, and placed these in Ziplock bag.

Keep in a dark cupboard. Seeds typically sprout in a week or 10 days.

 

 

 

We sowed our seeds in soil with a hard shell on and without to see if they made any difference.

Indeed Ms. Yong was right.

It was much faster to germinate seeds without the hard shell ( about 10 days).

With the shell on, it took about 20 days to see the first sprout.

 

 

10 days to germinate when husks are removed from seeds. 20 days with husks on.

 

 

One week old seedling was 4 cm in length.

 

 

 

 

The seedling grew very slowly.

It remained a short plant in December.

 

 

The plant grew more leaves.

 

 

 

 

One problem after another began to affect this weakening plant.

In addition to grasshoppers, there were leaf miners and then, potassium deficiency.

 

 

Members from our gardening group, SG Farming in Apartments, suggested seaweed fertilizers to treat this.

One year on, I am still battling with grasshoppers on this Meyer plant from seed.

Although some leaves were eaten, this plant is very hardy and standing strong in haze and heavy thunderstorms.

Our own made compost was added to the plant on November 4th 2016.

Before it can grow, most of the leaves were eaten by grasshoppers.

Thereafter, it never recovered and continue to decline.

We made the painful decision to cull our plant.

Grafted plants from the nurseries would have a higher chance of seeing fruits than seeds borne for lemons.

 

 

A fellow gardener, Marvie Costales , shared how she air layered a citrus plant using only dried leaves and grass.

 

 

 

For myself, the knowledge and satisfaction obtained from witnessing a seed’s first step and accompanying its journey are just as entertaining and fulfilling.

Harvesting the fruits would, of course, be the cherry on top! 🙂

It would be really nice if we had our own grown lemons for cooking.

Lemons are used in varied ways at home, in our chilled teas, to marinate fish and chicken and even in our savory pies!

Verdict – Not worth the time and effort to grow Meyer lemon plant from supermarket fresh seed (extracted from lemons) based on our experience.

It is better to buy a grafted plant from the nursery.

These seeds are easy to germinate and the plant is hardy, but the growth rate was very slow.