Very cool! None of your Zone 3 neighbors are impressed, eh? I agree...my lemons seem to be the easiest to grow in the North. Limes seem the hardest! Here is a pic of my improved Meyer...it has about 15 lemons on it currently and I had to actually prune it quite a bit this year for my space. It is a grafted 3 year old tree from Hirt's gardens via Amazon. Now I buy from 4 winds but just found Logees in CT which saves a TON on shipping for me...just bought 3 more from them.

Here's a list of pH levels of some of our most beloved canning ingredients: Item Name and Approximate pH Lemon Juice 2.00 - 2.60 Lime Juice 2.00 - 2.35 Orange Juice California 3.30 - 4.19 Orange, Juice Florida 3.30 - 4.15 Pineapple Juice, canned 3.30 - 3.60 Tomatoes 4.30 - 4.90 Tomatoes, canned 3.50 - 4.70 Tomatoes, Juice 4.10 - 4.60 Tomatoes, Paste 3.50 - 4.70 Tomatoes, Puree 4.30 - 4.47 Tomatoes, Strained 4.32 - 4.58 Tomatoes, Vine ripened 4.42 - 4.65 Vinegar 2.40 - 3.40 Vinegar, cider 3.10 I'd bet this is the same list that Linda Lou referenced above. The complete list is at the link below - I go to this list a lot when I'm not sure what is low-acid (higher numbers on the pH scale) vs. borderline vs. high-acid (lower numbers on the pH scale) food for "experimenting". Here is a link that might be useful: Approximate pH of Foods and Food products

I seldom buy fresh lemons. Don't use a lot of lemon/lime juice but when I do it's usually bottled and I don't think I've ever used up a bottle either - it winds up getting tossed. The taste doesn't bother me in the least. It goes in stuff usually so it's far from being the predominant flavor with some exceptions. Reminds me of when some people were talking about how you MUST buy this hotsie-totsie chili powder. It tastes SOOOOOOO much better. Not one took me up on the challenge to make a batch of chili, split it in half, put the hotsie-totsie in one and el-cheapo in one and have someone mix them up and see if you can *honestly* taste the difference. Now fresh lemon juice probably will be noticible if you're making lemonade or something. I put a lot of lemon in it. But in a sauce or something, I doubt quite highly that many, if any could tell which was the "nasty" and which was the "fresh". Especially considering there's probably a big difference in taste between lemons picked off a tree and those bought in a store and sitting on the shelf in the coolers for however long.

I'll definitely call Minute Maid. I think their frozen juice products are great although I haven't bought them recently so didn't realize the lime juice had been discontinued. It seems like whenever I find a product I really, really like - it gets discontinued. I think Snapple may be discontinuing their Diet Raspberry Tea and DH and I are not happy about it. If we stick together as consumers and let manufacturers know what we like, maybe they will think twice before discontinuing items.