Lime & lemon suitable for indoor

MFJFIGS

MFJFIGS

Well-known member
Friends,
My wife would like to grow a lime tree and a lemon tree in 7-gallon pots in the family room.
I know nothing about citrus trees and I would appreciate your thoughts, please, starting with what varieties I should look for.
Trees will be placed in a corner between an east facing window and a south facing window. We are in MA Z6b, where the skies could be grey for a week or two with no to little direct sunlight.
Thank you 😊
 
My experience hasn’t been extensive, but I can tell you some of my pitfalls. I grew Meyers lemon for awhile. It's biggest problem was scale as I would set it out on the deck in the summer and until I learned to give every leaf and stem a bath, it brought scale in and I wouldn’t notice until it coated the floor underneath it with a sticky coating. They smelled great and produced a lot of lemons, more than I could or wanted to eat. I watered it to death one winter. Then it was a Bearss lime which was also productive.
 
I've had challenges with it but I have fruited lemons indoors. Meyer is probably the least difficult that I've tried. I didn't care for the flavour.... but I like a very sour lemon personally. I personally prefer the flavour of Eureka more. I wish I could get my hands on something like a Femminello Lemon. The taste is excellent.

You will need to hand pollenate and the "sticky" mentioned above is a real thing. The aroma of the bloom may be the best smelling flower ever in my humble opinion.

For me they tended to flower more after a period of stress. I would let them get bone dry, then water with food and they'd explode. They will self-thin small fruit that set while the tree is developing and only keep what it can ripen.... which is not many at first.

Whatever you, if you're going to want to get something as "dwarf" as possible. A non dwarf would likely become very difficult to manage indoors.

This place won't ship to me and I have no experience with them but I recall they have a good reputation.

www.fourwindsgrowers.com

Citrus Trees For Sale / Semi-Dwarf Citrus Trees for Sale

Our semi-dwarf citrus trees for sale are shipped directly from our California nursery to your doorstep! Choose from over 60 varieties of citrus trees, including lemon, lime, orange, manadrin, kumquat and grapefruit trees!
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I'm sure there are many more options
 
Citrus do well in pots. Maybe Persian lime and variegated pink lemon.
The lemon I picked mainly for looks. But is productive for me.
I have not grown citrus indoors tho. But with enough sun or artificial light and a small art paint brush for pollination.
I think you will be fine.
 
Thank you, All. That is super helpful.
The website Joe shared has a huge collection and the photos are breathtaking.

I looked at the Improved Meyer Semi-Dwarf & Bearss Seedless Lime Semi-Dwarf, both are self-fertile, so I presume I wouldn’t need to pollinate them. Is that correct?

​

 
MFJFIGS said:
Thank you, All. That is super helpful.
The website Joe shared has a huge collection and the photos are breathtaking.

I looked at the Improved Meyer Semi-Dwarf & Bearss Seedless Lime Semi-Dwarf, both are self-fertile, so I presume I wouldn’t need to pollinate them. Is that correct?

​

Click to expand...
Self fertile normally means you don't need another tree for cross pollination. But the tree still needs to be pollinated.
 
MFJFIGS said:
Thank you, All. That is super helpful.
The website Joe shared has a huge collection and the photos are breathtaking.

I looked at the Improved Meyer Semi-Dwarf & Bearss Seedless Lime Semi-Dwarf, both are self-fertile, so I presume I wouldn’t need to pollinate them. Is that correct?

​

Click to expand...

Outdoors, every pollinator insect in the area will swarm to it…. Hopefully not in your house though. I would take a small watercolour brush and just go from one bloom to the other on a regular basis. Loads of fruit will set but don’t be worried when many start to drop
 
MFJFIGS said:
Friends,
My wife would like to grow a lime tree and a lemon tree in 7-gallon pots in the family room.
I know nothing about citrus trees and I would appreciate your thoughts, please, starting with what varieties I should look for.
Trees will be placed in a corner between an east facing window and a south facing window. We are in MA Z6b, where the skies could be grey for a week or two with no to little direct sunlight.
Thank you 😊
Click to expand...

7 gallon is a bit small for fruiting citrus. 10-15 is the recommendation. ( this comes directly from the owner of a very large citrus nursery I had the fortune of speaking with at length) They struggle to fruit less than 10 gallons, not that they won’t but they do better in bigger pots. As far as dwarfing. The pot itself will help dwarf the plant by restriction of the root system.
As far as rootstocks any of the trifoliates are good and they add some cold hardiness. Flying dragon and I think it’s rubideax(?) are really common ons used.
 
SpiritFarmVa said:
7 gallon is a bit small for fruiting citrus. 10-15 is the recommendation. ( this comes directly from the owner of a very large citrus nursery I had the fortune of speaking with at length) They struggle to fruit less than 10 gallons, not that they won’t but they do better in bigger pots. As far as dwarfing. The pot itself will help dwarf the plant by restriction of the root system.
As far as rootstocks any of the trifoliates are good and they add some cold hardiness. Flying dragon and I think it’s rubideax(?) are really common ons used.
Click to expand...

I've never tried it .... Maybe you have? I assume it could be done in a 7 gal but like figs..... one wouldn't get many fruit if the container isn't large enough.... My guess is it would drop even more fruit that set.
 
TorontoJoe said:
I've never tried it .... Maybe you have? I assume it could be done in a 7 gal but like figs..... one wouldn't get many fruit if the container isn't large enough.... My guess is it would drop even more fruit that set.
Click to expand...

That I can’t answer. We are
Pretty new to citrus so we go off what the expert advised us on. We do know any tree we put in smaller than 10 gallon has never fruited. But we didn’t fertilize enough in those cases.
There are plenty of citrus bonsai you can see on you tube with a few fruit on them so obviously it can be done.
 
SpiritFarmVa said:
That I can’t answer. We are
Pretty new to citrus so we go off what the expert advised us on. We do know any tree we put in smaller than 10 gallon has never fruited. But we didn’t fertilize enough in those cases.
There are plenty of citrus bonsai you can see on you tube with a few fruit on them so obviously it can be done.
Click to expand...

Figs are heavy feeders but I think citrus are a great deal more hungry still.
 
We have a prolific dwarf key lime that produces bigger fruit than we expected and therefore the perfect size! It isn’t even 3’ in height. We also have a young red finger lime that is a very small bush - should get fruit this year. They both reside in our living room a good bit of the time. Our 2 lemons (Lisbon and Improved Meyer) are outside all the time.
 
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