Last edited on 3 Jan 2020. View history

Meyer Lemon

A variety of lemon

How to sow Meyer lemon: Transplant grafted sapling or direct seed indoors

Sun requirement for Meyer lemon: Plant in Full Sun

The Meyer Lemon is an evergreen citrus fruit tree native to China that is most likely a cross between a true lemon and a mandarin or common orange. In China, it is grown as an ornamental. It has been increasingly cultivated in the U.S. for culinary purposes since the California Cuisine movement of the 1990s. The tree has dark green, shiny leaves and fragrant white flowers with a purple base. The fruit has deep yellow skin and is rounder than true lemons. The pulp is dark yellow and sweeter and less acidic than true lemons. The lowest temperature a Meyer Lemon tree can withstand is -5.5° C. It can be grown in containers and moved indoors in colder regions. Trees started from seed bear fruit in 4 years, transplanted saplings bear fruit in 1-2 years.

7: plantings
2: harvests
0: seed packets

Growstuff is a free, community-run site for people who grow food. Keep track of what you plant and harvest, find seeds to swap, and see what is growing near you. Join to record your own Meyer lemons.

Meyer lemon facts

Lifespan

Perennial living more than two years

First harvest expected

79 weeks after planting

Height × spread

300cm × 150cm

Row Spacing

250cm

Grown for

fruit harvested 2 times

What are growing degree days?

A plant grows with warmth, not with days. A growing degree day is one day's worth of useful warmth: how many degrees the day's average temperature is above the lowest temperature the crop grows at. Add them up from planting and you know how far along the crop is, whatever the calendar says.

Say that lowest temperature is 10°C. A day averaging 17°C gives 7 growing degree days. A day averaging 8°C gives none, as it is too cold for the crop to grow. That is why the same lettuce takes about 50 days in a summer and 90 in an autumn: it needs the same total warmth either way.

For Meyer lemon, the FAO EcoCrop database gives a lowest growing temperature of 12°C and a shortest growing cycle of 210 days at its best temperature, about 1995 growing degree days to a first harvest.

Where you've told us where your garden is, we use this and the weather there to predict when your Meyer lemon will be ready to harvest. We don't use it for how long a plant lives or when it finishes: we go by what members have logged for that.