So close to ripening!

The weather here made national news on Sunday night. It was apparently quite a storm, with unusually windy wind. A few trees fell in the neighborhood. The roads were messy with debris. The electricity at home was disrupted. Otherwise, to me, it did not seem like a particularly bad storm. After all, this is winter.

HOWEVER, on Saturday, even before the worst of the weather on Sunday, the wind knocked over my small ‘Ponderosa’ lemon, only a few hours after I posted a picture of one of its two developing fruit. It is a dinky tree in a #1 can, but its lemons are disproportionately large. As I mentioned on Saturday, I should have removed the lemons to divert resources to vegetative growth, but wanted to see if they would develop and ripen. The weather did it for me.

Now I am annoyed. I do not like to be one who complains about the weather. There is not much to complain about in that regard here. This is a pleasantly mild climate that lacks the sort of severe weather that other climates must contend with. The gust that blew over the small lemon tree was not nearly as strong as those that blew over trees within the surrounding forests and neighborhoods. I am just annoyed that after letting the lemons grow as much as they did, their effort will now be wasted.

The two lemons did not develop as they should have, but are still bigger than average ‘Eureka’ or ‘Lisbon’ lemons. I put them aside to ripen if they can. I doubt that they will. I can prune the small tree to remove the stems that had previously supported the two lemons, and make cuttings of them, to grow more small trees. Actually, I should have done this anyway.

2 thoughts on “Horridculture – Weather

    1. They are nothing special. I process them like most other cuttings, . . . . which is not how citrus should be grown. They should be grafted onto shaddock understock. I just did not bother doing so for ‘Ponderosa’ lemon because it is not so vigorous that it needs dwarfing rootstock to stay compact.

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