Content of the article:
Among homemade citrus fruits, Meyer's lemon is considered the most unpretentious to keeping conditions. An undersized bush growing in pots was discovered by naturalist Meyer in China. So called lemon - Meier or Chinese. Meyer's lemon fits well as a flower in small rooms. The plant is very decorative, has dark leaves, at the same time fruits of different maturity and flowers. Lemon ripen juicy, peculiar taste, rounded. It is believed that this variety is a hybrid created by nature by crossing lemon and orange.
How to grow a lemon at home and achieve fruiting
If you decide to create a citrus orchard, then experience better on indoor lemons. The most unpretentious of them is Chinese lemon. Here are just more and more clones, you need to choose the most successful bush for reproduction, or buy a ready-grafted plant. When you create the right conditions, lemon Meier can bestow fruits the next year.
It is very important to comply with the conditions of the lemon. With deviations, he will rebel, dropping foliage. The presence of 10 healthy mature leaves allows the indoor lemon to feed one fruit. And the more leaves on the tree, the greater the yield it can give. But with carelessness in the care of the plant will drop flowers and ovaries, which will upset the household.
Agricultural machinery of Chinese lemon at home
If the apartment has a warmed balcony, the content of the Chinese lemon is simplified. This sort of lemons is bred in the southern regions of the country in the open field with little insulation. For vegetation in spring, the temperature should not be above 18 degrees. Otherwise, the ovary will fall down, and the plant will slow down growth.
If you put a room lemon with pouring fruits in the summer outside or in the garden, the fruits will fall off. The tree is experiencing a dramatic change in the situation painfully.
The best will be to provide lemon with an even temperature of about 12-140 ° C in winter. As soon as the balcony is at about this temperature, move the lemon there until autumn. In the autumn, it is impossible to bring a tree into a warm room right away - it will drop the leaves. It is necessary to change the temperature of the content gradually, giving warmth to whom the earth is. If the adaptation was successful, the leaves on the bush will remain.
The plant is demanding to create favorable conditions:
- lighting and proper placement;
- temperature conditions;
- moisture regime and irrigation water quality;
- regular feeding and soil quality.
Taking care of a room lemon is more difficult. He needs to find a bright place, but at the same time to prevent overheating. The higher the ambient temperature, the more the plant needs watering and spraying. In the summer, it is normal to wet the leaves in the morning and in the evening, but so that the sun's rays do not focus on the drops, and there is no burn. Water the pot, too, need twice. Soft water with warm water is watered until the earth clot gets wet and the water is not filtered through the drain hole. In winter, lemon watering is reduced in lemon care, leaves are not moistened.
It is necessary to strive to create illumination for a room lemon for about 12 hours year-round. With a long day, the sheet mass increases intensively. With a short - the plant drops the leaves and can get sick.
If watering is plentiful, there is a risk that the soil will thicken and a jet of water will flow out where there is less resistance. Lack of water will lead to yellowing and dropping the leaves. Therefore, up to five years, the plant is annually rolled over into a large container. If the roots did not entangle a clod of earth, a transplant is not required. Later, the top layer of soil is changed annually, and if possible, the lemon is transplanted into a fresh substrate.
A fast growing plant needs to be fed with a complex composition of mineral fertilizers. Make a solution two hours after the morning watering of the soil.
The main rule - Meyer's lemon does not like shocks. He needs equal conditions of detention, a stable location with a small turn along the axis, for uniform illumination, the absence of drafts.
leaf Why does lemon need pruning?
In order to create a tree, you need to form a plant from an early age. If you do not regulate growth, the plant tends upwards. By multilevel crown formation, a condition is created for obtaining a leafy, compact, dwarf plant.
Annual spring pruning, nipping in the summer and easy removal of the twigs during the harvest are necessary to obtain a crop from a room lemon in the house. On the new shoots flower buds are formed, the future harvest is being laid. On young plants, the number of buds is regulated manually. An adult tree itself resets the excess color, determining the load.
Even before the first flowering, the bush is formed in several stages:
- A young plant of the first year of life at a height of more than 20 cm is pruned, leaving 6 lower sheets. After some time, several new branches will grow on the sides, one of which will be central.
- After waiting for several upper branches to grow to 20-25 cm, they are again pruned, as the first central one. Later, after regrowth form second order branches.
- In the same way form branches of the third order. As a rule, after the third pruning, flower buds begin to form.
How to reproduce Chinese lemon
There are several techniques for planting a lemon and speeding up the first harvest. The most common breeding method is grafting. Sliced spring twigs are full cuttings for rooting. The lower cut must necessarily be oblique, under the lower kidney. The leaves are pruned so that evaporation is less and the stalk will receive nourishment, it will not dry.
It is possible to root a cutting in water, or in a greenhouse with wet sand, but the cutting must not touch the film or the walls of the vessel. In the lower part of the formation of a collage, grow from its roots. If rooting goes under the jar, spray the stalk.
You can grow a seedling from a drupe, but if you need to get a fruit tree, you will need to be inoculated against a varietal lemon. It is made on a two or three year old seedling using splitting methods, cuttings by the bark or by simple copulation.
For the rooting of the cuttings used sand and peat mixture. Young seedlings need fertile soil. Its composition:
- sand - 1 part;
- humus - 1 part;
- turf - 2 parts;
- leaf ground - 1 piece.
For a mature plant, more sod earth and some clay are added to the substrate. When creating the mixture, ash is added to the ground. The drainage layer consists of expanded clay and charcoal.
Having fulfilled all the conditions of the content of lemon Meyer, one can expect a return from a citrus tree in the form of tasty fragrant fruits.
