The Meyer lemon, a popular hybrid of a true lemon and a mandarin orange, is prized by home growers for its sweeter, less acidic fruit. The time it takes for a Meyer lemon tree to bear fruit is highly variable, ranging from a single growing season to over a decade, depending entirely on the tree’s origin. Understanding the specific nature of your tree is the first step in setting realistic expectations for when you might be able to pick your first lemon.
The Timeline: Seedling Versus Grafted Trees
The quickest way to harvest fruit is by purchasing a grafted tree from a reputable nursery. Grafting joins a cutting from a mature, fruit-producing Meyer lemon tree onto a hardy rootstock. Since the scion wood comes from a plant already capable of flowering, the tree is reproductively mature upon planting. These nursery-grown trees are typically one to two years old when sold, and they begin bearing fruit within one to three years of being planted.
The timeline is different when a tree is grown directly from a seed. Seedlings must first progress through a juvenile phase, a period of vegetative growth before they can flower. For a Meyer lemon grown from a seed, this process often requires seven to fifteen years before the tree is mature enough to produce its first blossoms and set fruit. Purchasing a grafted tree bypasses this lengthy juvenile stage, making it the preferred method for a faster harvest.
Essential Care Factors That Accelerate Fruiting
Once a young tree is planted, providing optimal conditions helps ensure it reaches its fruiting potential quickly. Meyer lemon trees require at least six to eight hours of direct, unfiltered sunlight daily to support the energy demands of flowering and fruit development. Insufficient light is a common cause of delayed maturity and poor fruit production, as the tree cannot produce the sugars necessary to sustain a crop.
Proper nutrition is a significant factor in encouraging timely fruiting, as citrus trees are known as heavy feeders. A young tree needs a consistent regimen of fertilizer high in nitrogen, which supports strong vegetative growth. General garden fertilizers are often inadequate and may lead to micronutrient deficiencies. Applying a specialized citrus fertilizer that contains elements like iron, zinc, and manganese is important for healthy growth and better fruit production. Iron is necessary for the plant to properly utilize nitrogen and other nutrients.
Consistent, deep watering is also necessary to support the entire tree structure, promoting the root growth needed to sustain a later fruit crop. Watering should be deep enough to penetrate the entire root zone, rather than shallow surface applications, while avoiding over-saturation that can lead to root issues.
Managing temperature stress prevents the tree from diverting energy away from growth and flowering. Although Meyer lemons are more tolerant of cold than many other citrus varieties, they still need protection from hard freezes. When a tree experiences severe cold, it must expend energy on recovery and survival, which significantly delays the onset of flowering and fruiting.
Managing the Initial Fruit Set and Harvest
When your young tree finally produces its first flowers and sets fruit, it is beneficial to intervene to ensure the tree’s long-term health. It is recommended to manually remove, or thin, most or all of the small fruit that appears in the first one to two years after planting. This practice forces the tree to redirect energy into developing a robust trunk and strong branches that can support a heavy yield in future years.
Allowing a young tree to carry a large initial crop can hinder its structural development and result in smaller, lower-quality fruit. When thinning, the small lemons should be removed when they are about the size of a pea, preventing the tree from exhausting its resources. It is also normal to observe a natural phenomenon where the tree drops many flowers and small, immature fruit, which is its own way of regulating the crop load based on available resources.
Once the tree is mature and you allow the fruit to develop, Meyer lemons take approximately six months to reach full maturity. Unlike common lemons, the Meyer variety is fully ripe when its skin changes from a deep yellow to a slightly golden or orange-yellow color, resembling the shade of an egg yolk. This distinct color indicates the peak sweetness and flavor have been achieved.