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How fast do lemon trees grow?

11 years ago

I have a lemon tree seedling with about 3 leaves. It's about 3in tall. It's been growing for about 2 months, from a lemon seed I got from a store bought lemon, but stopped growing for about a month because I angered it by trying to get it into a looser potting soil. It finally appears to be growing again.

I have it in a SW facing window, I sometimes leave the humidifier in my bedroom on, so the lemon tree will get lots of humidity and heat.

The bedroom can get up to 75F in the winter, and up to 85F in the summer. The coldest temp in my room during the winter is 68F, and about 76F in the summer.

With those conditions, how fast can the lemon tree grow? And if it were in the BEST conditions, how fast could it grow then? Thanks.

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Comments (4)

hoosierquilt USDA 10A Sunset 23 Vista CA
11 years ago
Citrus seedlings, especially lemons, can grow pretty fast. Re-potting will cause a brief period of adjustment for any plant, or even downright transplant shock, so that's to be expected. Your tree is getting plenty of warmth, and the humidity is a good thing. Just make sure you're watering regularly (but not too much), and you must fertilize once a month as well, since you've got your tree in a pot. Lemon tree seedlings in the ground in ideal conditions can grow several feet a year, they are very vigorus citrus cultivars (they grow like weeds here where I live - on their own roots or grafted). In a pot of course, a little slower, but you should see about a foot a year I would think, if you fertilize with a good citrus fertilizer once a month. Most of our experienced container citrus folks on this forum use DyaGro Foliage Pro, which has the ideal NPK ratio plus all the micros.

Lisbon and Eureka lemons are polyembryonic, so the larger seedling that sprouts from your seed (you may get more than one seedling per seed with polyembryonic seeds) the larger seedling will be the clone, the later and smaller seedling will most likely be hybrids, so they are considered true to type. However, if you've planted a Meyer lemon seed, you will not get a seed that is true to type, as Meyer lemons are monoembryonic. You will be getting a hybrid of the Meyer lemon and whatever other citrus tree pollen fertilized that fruit and produced your seed.

Patty S.
'
mcgyvr2009i
Original Author
10 years ago
Almost a year later after successfully germinating the seed. It is now between 4 and 7 inches tall and it's branching off now. It's only one plant (but some of my clementines have grown two from one seed). One branch comes from between one of the bottom two leaves and the stem, and another branch comes from between the third leaf and the stem. It's been growing pretty fast in the past couple months but really slow in the winter. Would you say it's pretty healthy if it's branching? And if I only got one lemon tree from one seed, does that make it a meyer lemon? If not, here are some pictures of it in hopes that you can identify it...

Full Lemon Tree
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Top View
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Branch
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Branch (to be)
{{gwi:640236}}

Thanks a bunch!
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jbbrown9
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>> And if I only got one lemon tree from one seed, does that make it a meyer lemon?

That's not a very good test. I germinated a bunch of seeds in the last few months. I just went out and counted them. I have 22 single plants, 6 doubles, and more that were too early to tell which they'll be. These are not from meyer lemons, but only 25% are coming up as double seedlings. For me, at least, single plants are the norm even with a non-meyer.
tofu grow
3 years ago
how are your trees doing now?

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