Start a baseball game or a lemonade stand with all those lemons? ;) Or perhaps do you like lemon slices in water? My parents have always had a semi dwarf one and it's always produced more than they can use. I can't imagine going through that many lemons every season unless you love lemonade.

Bacon...I do like lemonade...and lemon water is great..plenty of lemon juice, some cucumber slices, ginger root, and papaya chunks floating around in it. There is also a great recipe out there for a lemon/ginger sorbet that uses quite a bit of juice but I'm still lagging impossibly behind. I have a number of friends who take lemons but I still am over-run. That said, I LOVE the aromas from freshly squeezed and zested lemons! I have tried capturing that aroma by soaking zest in vodka. It looked pretty and smelled fair but wasn't strong enough to be a room freshener. I wonder if I could distill off the oils from the peel and/or the rest of the lemon?

We also use lemons for helping the garbage disposal smell better. We cut some slices up and throw them in and it helps with smells. It sounds like you have a fair amount of good ideas already!

Wow what a harvest. Nice tree. Hope you love lemons!

You're in a great position to be a kind neighbor. )

Here is the ginger sorbet recipe for those who want it.

There are two stages, first to make a simple syrup which can be refrigerated for later, and then to mix the syrup to make the sorbet.

SYMPLE SYRUP :>)

16 cups water

4 cups mild honey

1 cup light brown sugar (I use Zulka)

1 large ginger root, washed and sliced very thin

In a large pot, bring the water, honey, sugar, and ginger to a boil.

Simmer over low heat for 5-minutes and then let steep for 15 minutes....or I like to let it cool completely down and even refrigerate overnight is even better.

Strain out the ginger and refrigerate the simple syrup until you are ready to make sorbet. I'm sure this could even be frozen for much later.

THE SORBET

For 1 1/2 quarts of sorbet, combine 4 cups simple syrup, 1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice, and 1/2 cup frozen orange juice concentrate.....or cut the fresh lemon juice to 1/2 cup and increase the orange juice concentrate to 1 cup to reduce the tartness.

Chill the ingredients in the refrigerator if you didn't use cold ingredients, then pour into a Cuisinart ice cream maker and let it run until the mixture is very thick. Eat soft or transfer to a container and freeze.

too bad you can't ship them, I would take some off you hands since my lemons are about half the size of a penny right now lol

Bountiful harvest!

Do you grow other citrus varieties? Would absolutely love a mandarin tree in my yard. Anything that can be eaten out of hand with few seeds would be treasured tree.

I would take some if I lived closer, nothing like fresh lemonade! What about taking them to a local produce stand or to Walmart to have them sell for you. Costumers would love having homegrown local produce!

It would be great to work out something with a local store...some do sell local produce. As many as I have, I'm not sure if I have that many though. That would be a good thing to check...they have a huge HEB in Beaumont nearby.

Dave, I also have a couple of bearing Satsuma oranges. I think those are mandarins, and I have a dancy tangerine. It made a few fruit last year and has quite a few this year. It's almost too cold here for the dancy but I planted it in a very protected area and it has about three years on it now so hopefully it will make it if we have a bad winter. Being able to walk by a tree and eat the fruit right there is one of the joys of having your own tree. I'm amazed that folks in colder climates work so hard to grow citrus though....there are cold climate choices like plums, apples, cherries, and peaches.

LOL John, you made me laugh! I am envious of your position. Too bad I can't come and snag a few! I know someone here in town who is overrun with figs every year. She has a brown turkey fig tree that is almost as tall as her two-story house. She gets thousands of figs! During that time, she works out a deal with local restaurants and sells the figs to them. With all the buy local craze, they are in high demand. If I were you, I would approach a few restaurants. Even if you don't sell them for lots of cash, they will get put to use instead of rotting or freezing them for God-knows how long!

Your tree looks incredible!! Love it!

Laura, oh man, I do have one fig tree and it's big enough to bear enough figs to make preserves but I have to put a big modular cage around it to keep the birds and squirrels off. I put the cage over my Japanese plum this year and just wasn't in the mood to put it back up over the fig later...and so I hardly got any figs. The squirrels, mockingbirds, blue jays, and cardinals are the main culprits. I call them culprits during the bearing season but they are my friends at other times :>)

I actually do give lemons to several places around...a local bar, and a Mexican place. The one tree is really loaded this year but the assemblage in the back corner is actually a little lighter this year. It was really wet this spring but lately it has been awfully dry. I'm wondering what that will do for the flavor.

What about making and bottling lemon syrup? Then sell it on Etsy.

Here is another photo of the group of trees in the back corner.

Five of them were my first trees, seed-grown from my boss's tree. All of the others in my yard, except one that I air-layered from branch, sprouted from seeds I either planted or that came up where I composted the pulp/peels. I have 23 Ponderosas and 11 of them are bearing at least a few now. Mowing and trimming has gotten to be a big deal. I have less than an acre but trimming around the trees is getting to be a chore! I also have a meyer lemon, three Satsumas, three kumquats, two calamondins, a tangerine, two blood oranges, the sweet lime, the fig, a plum, a peach, several Japanese plums, and some other assorted yard trees/shrubs.

Oh, my fig is Celeste I think...would love a brown turkey but I'm not sure if I still have space for it. I LOVE fig preserves!

Raee....good comment, never heard of it so I'll have to see what it is...I assume it's a kind of simple syrup for making other things? I have tried putting some fresh peel shaved off with a peeler in a quart of honey. It makes for a nice lemony honey but honey is already so expensive I don't think I could market it.

Call a local food bank or charity that provides meals.

Phoenix goes though the same thing, and they have "Local Harvest" that gets volunteers to come strip the trees and haul the fruit to food banks.

Compost what you can't use or give away.

Those are great ideas! I looked at a recipe for those lemon preserves and may try to make some. I don't have as many though...it is likely that they will all end up in desserts of some type.

John what part of texas are you in?

Nancy...SE Texas, near Beaumont.....hot humid summers, long fall and spring, and two or three months of winter. We usually don't have more than a few nights down into the twenties at a time, then it warms up a bit. Mainly just gets really cold when we get the northers then the wind will shift to the south and it warms up a bit....oh, you're from Alabama so you know the routine :>)

Yes I do. I dont have yard space where i live for outside trees. Granite rock huge one and red clay soil. If i lived somewhere else with a better yard i would try citrus outside i am fighting deer a the moment. Santa claus needs to bring me a rifle)

I know they had meyers in ground at a local nursery one year when temps went way down killed it. They grow santsuma oranges in ground with a removable green house on top.

Nancy, you could experiment and if it is going to get very cold, put Christmas lights on the tree to help it endure. John, you should make those lemon preserves and start selling them!

I am incredibly jealous! I love lemon more than anything and would love to live in a zone where I could grow them in ground and have such an abundance to cook with, though I could see after years of so many how you might not want to use all of them. I have paid a very hefty price tag more than once on preserved lemons and they are amazing in savory and sweet dishes. I'm sitting over here proud of my very first 2 ripe Meyer lemons from my container tree I got for my birthday....but it doesn't quite compare to this especially since it only has about 8 other fruits on it.

I wish I had that many! our ponderosa only ever gave us dry lemons and cuts from the huge thorns!

I love lemons though. We use them in salsa, stir fry sauce, water, I put them in my diet soda. For the stir fry sauce it's just chicken broth, lemon, and spices. SOOO good. I am lemon obsessed so it might be a bit much for those who aren't. One of the tastiest snacks is a sliced cucumber or watermelon with lemon juice over it, sprinkled with a salty chili powder(like Tajin). I also love it on corn. Nothing else, just lemon on sweet corn.

Ok, enough lemon drooling over here...

Amazing how much y'all go on about the salted/preserved lemons. I guess it's basically a pickling process. Guess I need to try making some this year. I hardly add salt to anything I eat so I'm not real optimistic about liking them but this is not just about what I like!

Kelly, amen on the huge thorns! I have been clipping them some while I'm clipping off lemons but there are still bookoos of opportunities to become impaled. The cucumber/lemon/chili powder combo sounds really good!

Laura, on some really cold nights I have covered my trees with tarps and lit a little votive candle or two under the tarp. If you light the candle around 10:00PM, they lasted until early morning. I haven't set anything on fire yet!

Throw a gleaning party with 25 of your closest friends. Have pre made gift bags with 5-6 lemons in them each with a recipe for lemonade or lemoncello in the bag with the lemons and hand them out as your guests leave. Problem solved for 100+ lemons.

Evan

John and Evan, I want your yards!! I would be extremely happy and in heaven every day if I could walk out into a yard like yours...Some day, watch, I will be posting my own in ground citrus trees...

I am a huge fan of preserved lemons too. For savoury dishes calling for zest they provide perfect lemon flavour without the bitterness.

Put an ad on kijiji or craigslist advertising your lemons for sale, "interesting trades considered". I have always wanted to do that! Even if you never end up transacting wouldn't it be fun to see what kooky stuff people offer up?

Of course don't let anyone actually come to your house lol.

Nice problem to have, drowning in lemons!!

I posted an ad in a local e-list last year in the food section. I didn't get any responses. Folks around here have a tree if they really like lemons...or they have a friend like me. I think the dry weather is making the fruit ripen more quickly. Even my Satsuma oranges are ripening super fast.

I would think seriously about top grafting that tree with something edible and worthwhile like a New Zealand lemonade tree. Perhaps an early ripening mandarin would make you the envy of your area.