Seventeen years ago my family received a small lemon tree as a gift in Pyatigorsk. It was probably two or three years old. In its very first year it bloomed and even set fruit the size of cornelian cherries, but all of them dropped. The following year two fruits stayed on the tree and grew for ten months—one reached 450 grams, the other 300 grams. By the third year there were three lemons, the largest weighing 780 grams. As the tree grew, it produced more fruit and the lemons got bigger.
Every year the tree reliably yields one or two lemons between 900 and 1,000 grams. I have a note from two years ago: six fruits ripened at the same time—one weighed 1,030 grams, another 900 grams, and four ranged from 650 to 800 grams. They all have very thin skins and taste delicious.
The tree blooms several times a year, and the fruit takes about 10 to 11 months to develop after I pollinate the flowers with a soft brush. Even though the tree thrives in a sunny room, branches that end up in the shade will dry out. To keep the crown growing evenly, I rotate the plant 180 degrees every spring.
I don’t use mineral fertilizers. Instead, I soak cow manure in water, strain it, and water the tree with a weak solution every two weeks. Every evening I also water it with room-temperature water that’s been left to stand.
For propagation, take a 4- to 5-month-old cutting about 8 to 10 centimeters long with 3 to 4 leaves, and trim the leaves in half. Fill a small flower pot with a bit of sand and insert the cutting about 3 to 4 millimeters deep. Add fertile soil up to the leaves. If the soil is peat-based, mix it with sand. Cover the cutting with a half-liter glass jar. Water from below by pouring water into the saucer; keep the saucer filled with water. Once the first new leaf appears, remove the jar. As soon as the first shoot emerges, transplant the plant into a larger pot without disturbing the root ball. About 80 to 90 percent of the cuttings take root, and they begin to bloom by the third year.
In addition to the tree I described, I have two more lemon trees in my apartment, aged seven and three years. The seven-year-old also produces very large fruits. These three citrus trees create a unique microclimate in my Moscow apartment and contribute to why my family rarely gets the flu.
