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Last week, Vitelia received some lemons from a friend, but they’re not regular lemons. They’re sweet! As in, as sweet as an orange, but they look like lemons, and have lemon flavor. Weird, and yum!

I’m pretty sure this is them: Citrus Limetta ​

Here’s a fun fact about propagating lemons: Unlike most fruit trees, where growing from seed will give you all sorts of weird characteristics, with citrus you can usually get an exact genetic clone of the parent plant from seed.

Citrus are usually polyembryonic (more than one sprout -or embryo- per seed), with the larger, more vigorous of the sprouts being the clone.

If you want to try growing citrus from seeds you save right from the fruit, here’s how to do it.

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1. Save seeds from a fresh fruit, and plant them pretty soon. The fresher the seeds, the better chance of success.
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2. Plant seeds like you normally would: in a fine-grained seed starting mix, in a planter with drainage, and in my case absolutely necessary - self watering.
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3. Space the seeds fairly wide apart so that you can see clearly if you’re getting two sprouts from the same seed. (With seeds too close together it will be hard to tell if the sprouts come from the same or different seeds.)
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4. When the seedlings sprout, save only the sprouts that came from a double seed, and then save only the bigger, more vigorous seedling.

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The advantages of this approach are obvious: Fun! And very inexpensive! And baby citrus trees can make nice houseplants for the first couple years.

However, fruit trees from seed can take a lot longer to bear fruit than purchased, grafted trees. 5-10 years for seedling trees compared for 2-3 from grafted trees.

If your goal is a fruiting lemon tree in the next couple years, it might be worth the expense to order bare root trees for delivery this spring.

Happy Seedurday (on Monday)

Anne

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Do you have a seed question? Click here to submit your question and I'll answer it here in the newsletter!

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When you’re ready, here are some more ways I can help you grow a thriving garden from seed:

1. Plan your seed-starting schedule with our ​free printable planner.​

2. Download the free ​Orta Seed Starting Handbook with all the basics you need to succeed with seeds.​

3. Take the guesswork out of watering with Orta Self-Watering Pots. (Find discounted factory seconds here!)

4. Join the Orta Seed Club to have 5 hand-picked, unusual & high-yielding varieties delivered to you every season.

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