Seventeen years ago, my family received a small lemon tree as a gift in Pyatigorsk, probably around two or three years old. In its very first year, it produced flowers and even fruits the size of cornel berries, but they all fell off. The following year, two fruits managed to stay on the tree and grew for ten months. One weighed 450 grams, and the other 300 grams. By the third year, there were already three lemons, with the largest one tipping the scales at 780 grams. As the tree grew, the number of fruits increased, and they became larger.
Every year, the tree reliably produces one or two lemons weighing between 900 and 1000 grams. I have a note from two years ago: at the same time, six fruits ripened on the tree—one weighed 1030 grams, another 900 grams, and four ranged from 650 to 800 grams. All of them have very thin skins and are delicious.
The tree blooms several times a year, and the fruit takes about 10 to 11 months to grow after I pollinate the flowers using a soft brush. Despite the lemon tree thriving in a sunny room, some branches that end up in the shade dry out. To ensure the crown grows evenly, I rotate the plant 180 degrees every spring.
I don’t use mineral fertilizers. Instead, I soak cow manure in water and, after straining it, water the tree with a weak solution every two weeks. Every day, or rather every evening, I water it with room temperature water that has been allowed to sit.
For propagation, I take a 4 to 5-month-old cutting, about 8 to 10 centimeters long with 3 to 4 leaves, trimming the leaves by half. I fill a small flower pot with a bit of sand and insert the cutting about 3 to 4 millimeters deep. Then, I add fertile soil up to the leaves. If the soil is peat-based, I mix it with sand. I cover the cutting with a half-liter glass jar. I water from below by pouring water into the saucer (which always has water in it). Once the first new leaf appears, I remove the jar, and as soon as the first shoot emerges, I transplant the plant into a larger pot without disturbing the root ball. About 80 to 90% of the cuttings take root, and by the third year, they start to bloom.
In addition to the tree I just described, there are two more lemon trees in my apartment, aged seven and three years. The first one also produces very large fruits. These three citrus plants create a unique microclimate in my Moscow apartment, contributing to the fact that my family rarely suffers from the flu.