Allotments 4 All
Produce => Edible Plants => Topic started by: Lady of the Land on January 03, 2018, 15:00:04
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I have a lemon tree that am putting in unheated conservatory during daytime to maximise light and unheated room indoors at night. Pot has bubble wrap around outside to keep roots warm. The conservatory can be cold even during the day down to 0 oC- 5 oC. I have put a gas fire on low to bring temperature up to minimum of 10 OC in room . Root temperature has been at least 10 OC, mostly higher.
As the lemon needs a lot of light to avoid stressing it I have been looking at using a grow light either LED or CFL. I have no knowledge of these other than what I am attempting to find from the internet which seems mainly they are used for hydrophonics and fairly large systems when I only have one tree about 2 ft high and 1 1/2 ft wide. Most articles are by people based in America.
Can anyone from the UK advise on this and steer me towards a specific light or company that can help.
Thank you
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There are loads of lights now available on places like Amazon. Put in LED plant lighting.
All sizes and prices.
I had a lemon I kept in a south facing window for several winters but it was leaving it outside one day too long which did for it.
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Lemons are not as hardy as the mandarin family, but there are various mandarin-lemon crosses that are significantly hardier than lemons.
Meyers Lemon is the most established one and is happy at winter temperatures above 4C. Ordinary lemons and oranges are also OK at 4C as an absolute minimum but Meyers can also tolerate short dips below this (though shoots and sometimes branches can be lost at 0C).
One of the key things is perfect watering - anything except the goldilocks region is fatal. I lost about 10-20% a year until I started using a capillary mat platform in a tray - one of its surprising features is that as well as providing water it can actually suck excess water out, so occasional top-watering is no problem. I now lose 0-5% a year.
Most crosses are halfway between the parent species but some will be as weak as the weakest link. In theory most kumandarin and clemquat crosses should be among the hardiest but I have yet to test them outside. Breeding for size and sweetness sometimes produces unexpected results and weird grandparent genes can show up to scupper your plans. (Meyers is delicious in drinks and salads, even fruit salads, it may not be quite sour enough for some uses - but adding citric acid is easy, cheap and undetectable).
Off the top of my head the hardiest citrus species are kumquats, yuzu, satsumas, other mandarins, followed by bitter oranges, myrtle leafed sour orange and calamondins, then sweet oranges and lemons, then grapefruit and limes. Pomelos and citrons need much more heat.
Meyers can also be planted outside to grow quite happily in central London, right down the south coast, the south west and several other major cities up the west coast if you are lucky enough to have a sheltered well-drained sunny site you can give it, preferably on a south-facing slope.
Cheers.
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FYI We used to grow Meyer lemons outdoors in Kingwood in the far North side of Houston, TX and they are the best lemons I have ever tasted We grew kumquats, figs etc. as well, but we did not get enough cold days for apples.
We used to get the odd light frost and even a very small amount of snow and the lemons seemed to do alright even if we forgot to cover them.
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Are you sure you need extra light? is the conservatory that dark that you will need to supplement with artificial light?
A lot of the info you will find about grow lights and a lot of suppliers will target the home grow cannabis market so be aware!
I am afraid I don't know much about the light requirements of Lemons but you could look at something like this
https://www.lightinthebox.com/morsen-600w-full-spectrum-led-grow-light-for-hydroponics-vegetables-and-flowering-plants-red-blue-uv-ir-eu-plug_p4516485.html?category_id=4643&prm=1.2.1.1
The company is a lighting specialist not selling to the weed market so maybe speak to them?
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I've had a lemon tree, probably a Eureka, in a pot for about ten years. It was given to me because it was 'poorly' and my friend was going to chuck it! I repotted and fed it, occasionally it would lose quite a few leaves over the years. Last Spring it was repotted again and the roots rigorously pruned. Now the 14, quite large, fruit are turning yellow - I reckon they'll be ripe by next month and by the looks of the incipient small fruit on the tree there will be about a dozen again next year. The pot stands facing south in a sheltered corner of the patio all year, gets watered and fed once a month according to season and pruned to keep a good shape once in a while. So far, here in the southwest, it doesn't seem to mind the low winter temperatures which are often around zero - and sometimes even a bit lower. I'll post a photo when it stops raining and the wind dies down :BangHead:.
Tricia :wave:
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give it the ideal conditions and you will have a beautiful tree but not a lot of fruit. It has been my experience that a lemon tree fruits best when stressed, something to do with reproduction before it dies. So get the tree healthy, then abuse it with less light, water and food. let it get pot bound then when it fruits give it some love again.
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Piccies of my lemon tree.
Tricia :wave:
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If your location allows you to get away with planting Meyers lemon in well drained soil outside, then you bypass a lot of the other problems to the point where it's almost no-maintenance - even less than capillary systems...
My outdoor Meyers has over 30 maturing fruit on it right now and it's only around 0.75 of a cubic metre. None of the fruit is as large as a shop lemon but they are all useful sizes down to maybe green/yellow snooker ball.
One of the best things is the unsprayed zest (commercial citrus regions rely on heavy spraying and waxing) - easiest to scrape the tender pith off the back of the peel leaving perfectly clean zest for candying or just dropping in a bottle of vodka - delicious.
I forgot an issue with capillary watering of pots - if the pot is ceramic then you need to bridge the gap between the soil and the mat - easiest to use an offcut of mat about 10x3cm and push it halfway into the soil from below (through the biggest drain hole) - it's best to have the very edge of the drain hole pressing 1cm of the outer end of the offcut into the mat below.
Cheers.
PS. The last time my Meyers produced over 20 fruit was in 2010, but then it was cut down to a 10cm stump by the terrible frost that winter. 2 or 3 more hard winters took it down to a 3cm stump, but it has gradually recovered and has now passed its personal best.
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The cheapest way to provide additional light would be insert a SYLVANIA Grolux fluorescent tube into an (existing?) fluorescent fitting. T8 (11/4" dia.)sizes are common, aquarium suppliers will have 600mm, 900mm, 1200mm.etc. Queries regarding the actual light frequency from LEDs remain.
My understanding is that you need to 'stretch' the day light to match the daylength in citrus growing regions. (Match , say, Larnica sunrise/sunset, probably +2 hours each endof day
If your unheated conservatory is not domestically occupied, perhaps a maintained low temperature in the region of 45 deg F ,combined with such supplementary lighting as above, would provide a very useful gardening resource without enormous cost of running. More room for more lemons!!
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Thank you for suggestions and ideas, plus information about your own growing conditions. Amazed some of you are keeping your lemons outside, I am possibly mollycoddling it too much regarding the temperature.
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Thank you for suggestions and ideas, plus information about your own growing conditions. Amazed some of you are keeping your lemons outside, I am possibly mollycoddling it too much regarding the temperature.
It's not worth trying any lemon outside in winter - except Meyers which is a special case - and even then you need to be either South or West (preferably both) or very near the coast or several miles inside a large city. If you can do this then there are advantages to planting it in the ground because the soil is warmer than a pot and the water supply is more "Goldilocks".
I've read that some people in Texas bury whole lemon plants during the winter - perhaps DrJohnH can advise on how to try this in the UK? I've noticed that putting extra soil on tender herbaceous plants like pepinos and cape gooseberries before mulching can help them a lot - the heat in the ground below travels up better through soil than through mulch, and really deep burying is more work to do and more to undo.
Cheers.
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I was offered a lemon tree for my birthday. When we went to select one we chose a Meyer because the woman said it could be planted outside in a sheltered, sunny corner but all other varieties needed to be in pots to take into shelter for winter. This is in the Vendée, 20kms from the coast.
I have neither the time nor the inclination to bury whole lemon trees and, as I and OH get older, we want plants that don't need constant supervision - assuming we've got their cultivation needs correct in terms of soil, feed, watering and protection from ravaging insects, slimesters and birds.
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Regards burying whole lemon trees in TX that sounds odd- and a bit of a challenge (ours grew to about five feet tall in the space of a few years). Maybe in the North of the State as it can get very cold up there...
I did a quick Google and there may be some useful info for UK growers at this link: https://dcmga.com/north-texas-gardening/trees/citrus-in-north-texas/ (https://dcmga.com/north-texas-gardening/trees/citrus-in-north-texas/)
EDIT:
Also did a google on weather in Denton TX, where the author of the text at the above link lives and this is the 10 day forecast... https://weather.com/weather/tenday/l/76201:4:US (https://weather.com/weather/tenday/l/76201:4:US). Though the US is unseasonable cold at the moment, that part of TX is prone to ice storms just about every year...
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Regards burying whole lemon trees in TX that sounds odd- and a bit of a challenge (ours grew to about five feet tall in the space of a few years). Maybe in the North of the State as it can get very cold up there...
I did a quick Google and there may be some useful info for UK growers at this link: https://dcmga.com/north-texas-gardening/trees/citrus-in-north-texas/ (https://dcmga.com/north-texas-gardening/trees/citrus-in-north-texas/)
Thanks DrJohnH - the citrus link is very interesting and the introduction is delightful. It seems Kumquats are the way to go outside, and I'm plucking up courage to try my Kumandarin or Clemquat outside - I may bottle out and try to graft them onto my Poncirus instead - as a test case.
The link also highlights the differences between the UK and a central continental climate like North Texas. Here we would regard 72 hours significantly below 0C as unusual but our long winters often include very long periods, even weeks without thaws. With the winter noon sun around 15o we seldom see anything over 45F after a night freeze, so it's a long slow grind for marginally hardy plants. Also many plants regarded as hardy elsewhere fail here from damp cold roots.
December 2010 was a real killer of plants, with 9 days in North London that were entirely below zero, including one stretch of 90 hours between zero and -14C. It struggled to get over 6C and only managed to on 8 or 9 days that month. The slightly more normal Jan & Feb 11 were too little, too late.
As to the Texas tree-burying idea, I picked it up when I was working through the CRFG.org website many years ago - I think it was mentioned in the context of burying grape vines and fig trees rather than on its own - obviously burying winter-dormant stuff makes more sense, and maybe the trees in question were in pots? I can't remember. Maybe the grape vines were young ones flexible enough to be bent to the ground?
It did make me think of training a citrus horizontal, or horizontal enough to bend it down to 30cm. I should try this at the allotment.
Anyway, after my 2010 experience with the Meyers Lemon by my doorstep I'm pretty sure that burying just the trunk to the branching point (basically a 50cm cone of soil with mulch on top) would have reduced the recovery time by half, maybe more... More than half of the 4-5 years of recovery time was spent growing the 1cm tall stump until 8mm thick fruiting wood got to 50cm off the ground.
However it's a treat to look at through the winter, so I'll only try burying if I get some dire warning.
Cheers.
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Vinlander- I think burial might work, but to me the biggest challenge would be to keep the damp (and especially the wet) out... Keep us posted!
All the best.
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How are you supposed to bury it without damage and, more importantly, exhume it without damage?
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Vinlander- I think burial might work, but to me the biggest challenge would be to keep the damp (and especially the wet) out... Keep us posted! All the best.
Fortunately my plot has a slope and I'd put a citrus towards the top, above the raised bed section (which I put where I had waterlogging).
I'm on clay so I tend to plant exotics on a mound covered in 1 m2 of black plastic - but raising on a mound could make the burying that much harder so I'll have to choose the best slope. I suppose enhancing the slope would be OK. Any plastic around the tree would have to be removed before burying - to let the heat move up.
It's possible that burying with mulch alone could be enough in most of our winters but I feel the full treatment needs to be explored properly.
I need to find a lighter, friable soil to make the annual interment & exhumation easier - the key thing is a moderate ability to hold the moisture that increases heat conductivity from below (in contrast to a mulch where the ability to hold air is what makes it an insulating blanket).
The obvious choice from ingredients to hand would be very well-rotted woodchip* as the soil mound (better as a ridge) and fresh, fluffy woodchip as the mulch.
I'm inclining towards putting plastic over the soil mound/ridge before adding the mulch - the slope vs. the plastic should ensure the moderate moisture I need.
Woodchip on plastic needs to be contained, I do this a lot to protect plastic mulches (tarps) from the sun. I normally make a corral from slabs of newspapers bound with wire over sticks (to stop the wind shredding the pages) - I call them paper gabions.
* I have a continuous supply of spent rotted woodchip from the builders' bags that keep my coloured carrots above the fly.
I'm at my happiest making plans - sadly it remains to be seen whether the leisure, commitment and energy appear in the right time window - many things interfere with best-laid plans on allotments - I need a near-total absence of crises (like poor weather, health or surprise holidays).
Cheers.
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I was thinking about this- and depending on the size of the tree (which I don't know), I'd be inclined to wrap it in fleece.
Or perhaps just protect the trunk, put a box or mesh/newspaper gabion around it about the size of a tea chest and fill with dry sawdust or hay/straw to the top of the trunk and cover the whole box with plastic. The key is to keep everything dry...
Or maybe a combination of the two.
What do you think?
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I have a Yuzu which I got last for Christmas 2016 and while it isn't actually a Lemon it is similar and supposed to be resistant down to below -5C. We shall see if I get anything of it this year or next as they are also supposed to fruit when quite young..
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I was thinking about this- and depending on the size of the tree (which I don't know), I'd be inclined to wrap it in fleece.
This is the standard advice and it works well for normal winters and moderately hardy plants. However it just slows down the heat loss to the point where short snaps get deflected, but experience tells me it can't cope with a week without a thaw. Eventually the temperature will drop below zero. Fleece does allow the winter sun to warm the plant quickly (even when it can't create anywhere near a thaw).
This latter point persuades me to think this advice migrated here from well inside Europe or the Americas where cold weather is often bright and sunny during the day. This creates conditions inside the fleece that resemble Northern California where short moderate frosts are surrounded by balmy days, so many fruit species from further south manage to survive with superficial damage.
The conditions in New England do involve cloudy frosts much worse than ours, and their traditional answer is to use blackened oil drums of water inside the frame or shelter - this is very effective here. I have used it to grow Strawberry Guavas successfully for decades. The water in the metal container provides masses of latent heat as it freezes, and doesn't stop giving until the whole drum is frozen. This can stop plants freezing, but they have to be able to cope just above 0C - no good for toms or most peppers, but very good for Meyers. I haven't tried C.pubescens yet - I'm still building my stock.
One thing stopped all of these methods saving my plants in Dec 2010 - they all eventually run out of steam in a relentless freeze. Mainly because of that low sun - the wan pom sun as the Aussies call it. We think of Alaska, Kamchatka and Newfoundland as very far north but they are on or south of 51.5 where London is.
The only thing that is inexhaustible here (where we don't have permafrost) is ground heat stored since Summer. That's why I want to tap into it.
Cheers.