How to grow a lemon tree from a seed at home, planting and care

In flower shops you can find already fruiting lemon trees. Despite the fact that such a purchase will allow you to immediately have a fruit-bearing lemon at home, many gardeners are still afraid to buy an adult plant. Their fears are based on the fact that lemons do not tolerate changing conditions well, and, of course, many are stopped by the rather serious price of plants.

In such cases, you can find a less expensive way - this is plant lemon seed. Let's try to find out where to get high-quality lemon seeds and how to grow a lemon tree from a seed yourself.

Content:

• How to get lemon seeds for planting
• Planting lemon seeds in the ground, caring for seedlings
• How to care for lemon

How to get lemon seeds for planting

You can obtain seed material for growing lemon yourself in at least three ways:

• remove from a store-bought lemon
• get seeds from a fruit grown in the room
• buy lemon seeds at the store

Seeds from store-bought or homemade lemon fruit

The easiest and most accessible way for everyone to obtain sufficiently viable seeds is to buy fresh fruit in the store. In this case, you should not limit yourself to one or two bones. You may have to take out 12-15 of them to ensure you get a few lemon seedlings.

The freshness of the fruit itself plays an important role here; the less time has passed since the lemons were removed from the tree, the better the quality will be. planting material. Although it is difficult to hope that the store will receive lemons that were hanging on the tree two or three days ago. Of all the fruits, you need to choose elastic fruits, without signs of wilting or rot, with a uniform color.

As soon as the store-bought lemon is at home, you need to remove the seeds from it in the following way:

• carefully cut the fruit
• remove all the seeds
• rinse them to remove remaining pulp
• dry on a sheet of paper for an hour
• choose whole, full-bodied, rounded bones without deformation
• begin landing immediately

Higher quality seeds can be obtained from fresh varietal lemon grown at home. To do this, you need to use a ripened fruit. Once it is removed from the tree, the seeds need to be removed for planting. Prepare them in the same way as described above.

Buying lemon seeds in a store

Some seed stores, including on the Internet, offer consumers the opportunity to buy seeds of indoor decorative lemons. As a rule, they are placed in vacuum packaging, which protects them from drying out. Before planting, purchased lemon seeds should be soaked in water for 24 hours.

The initial water temperature should be + 40 degrees. Keep the container with seeds in a very warm place where the air temperature is + 28 degrees. After this, the bones need to be immediately plant in specially prepared soil.

Planting lemon seeds in the ground, caring for seedlings

Soil preparation

To germinate seeds, you will need loose soil that is well permeable to water and air.Important! Heavy soil with a large proportion of clay is unsuitable for producing lemon seedlings. A mixture of one part coarse sand, one part turf soil, one part rotted humus is quite suitable for planting lemons. You can also buy universal primer and mix two parts of it with one part of sand.

Pot for planting lemon seeds and planting lemon

A round plastic pot is suitable for germinating seeds. Its volume should be about 0.5 liters, and its diameter should be 6-8 cm. This volume is quite enough to grow seedlings to a size that allows them to be transplanted into a permanent pot.

Fill the containers with soil in advance. If they do not have drainage holes, be sure to make them. Moisten the soil with settled water. You can plant lemon seeds at any time of the year, but the best season is still spring. Seal the pit to a depth of 1.5 - 2 cm. 1-2 pits are enough for one pot.

Cover the container with a transparent bag or a plastic bottle without a bottom. Place the pots in a very warm room. If the temperature is + 25+ 28, then in about two weeks they will appear shoots. If the temperature is + 20 + 22, then the seeds can germinate only after a month. If the temperature is below + 18, then you may not wait for green seedlings at all.

Seedling care

Video on how to grow lemon at home:

If the illumination is not of fundamental importance before the sprout appears, then after the emergence of the shoots the container should be moved to a place well lit by the sun. At the cotyledon leaf stage, the film is not removed from the pot. It should be removed when 1-2 true leaves appear on the plant.

In the first two to three weeks, care comes down to timely watering.If seedlings appear in spring or summer, then the plant will not need additional light. At the stage of 4-5 leaves, the plant is transplanted into a permanent pot. This is done very carefully, preserving the integrity of the roots as much as possible.

To speed up rooting in a new pot, the transplanted plant should be covered with a transparent bottle or bag for 7-10 days. In order for a lemon tree grown from seeds to be healthy, look decorative, and possibly bear fruit, it requires special care.

How to care for lemon

The first three months the plant requires timely watering. It should be done as the soil in the pot dries. The soil should not be allowed to dry out completely. The plant does not need feeding at this age. In the future, the lemon needs to be fed two to three times per season. The first feeding should be done in the spring, the second - in early summer.

The plant is fed the third time in the second half of summer. For fertilizing, you can use ready-made mineral and organic mixtures.

In the first three years, the tree grows quite quickly and requires transplanting into a larger pot. When the size of the plant makes replanting problematic, you can annually remove part of the soil and replace it with new soil. Despite the fact that growing a lemon from a seed is an interesting activity, and its foliage has a beneficial effect on the indoor air, many are still concerned about the issue of flowering and fruit production.

Indeed, lemon trees grown from seeds bloom no earlier than after 12 - 15 years. To stimulate the appearance of flowers and fruits, the lemon tree needs to be grafted. A lemon grown from a seed will be a rootstock, and a scion will be a cutting or bud cut from a young indoor plant. lemon. Despite the fact that grafting requires special skills, such a plant turns out to be more adapted than a ready-made tree bought in a store.