Key Lime will come true-to-type from seed and may flower in as little as 2-3 years, with good care. Calamondin, perhaps not available at the grocery but maybe from a friend, can also bear from seed in a couple years. Lemons would take longer, and would likely be too big to grow inside the house before they bore their first flowers and fruit, but you could do that by growing a lemon seedling, then as the plant is approaching the ceiling, take a cutting or air layer from the top and using it to replace your original plant. That way the plant "thinks" it's getting taller, whereas you're actually keeping it shorter than the ceiling height. Oranges and grapefruit could be done the same way, but will take even more years (at least 8 for grapefruit; at least 10 for oranges, and that's under ideal conditions), and you'd likely have to go through at least 2-3 cutting/air layer cycles. Your Clementine seeds may flower in 3-4 years, but again, you may have to propagate from the top and so not end up with the original plant. Almost any other citrus that makes pollen (Tahiti/Bearss lime and navel oranges do not) could be used as a pollen source for it.

Hi Mike, What else can I explain to you because you seem to understand. I think the concept need's to be taken within reason. Total number of nodes or perhaps total number of contiguous nodes which would amount to a certain vegetative size or mass likely has to be fulfilled too. I think that idea of contiguous branching is the missing element in pushing a juvenile into fruiting. That could explain why some seedling citrus become vegetative giants in a tropical greenhouse without going mature. They have many contiguous nodes from unstressed growth but little contiguous branching from unstressed growth. Start stressing a highly vegetative tropical greehouse juvenile with some repeated droughts and it will often go fruiting. The drought stress kills the tip and new growth will be contiguous branching which seem's to follow a idea of contiguous branching being a factor. All I have ever read on the subject is that abstract which I found in a Google search several years ago. However it made perfect sense and my first trial a contiguous branching pruning seemed to work. I welcome you to buy that article and read it.

Dirt and sand don't belong in containers and will just make the plant suffer. Use a potting mix with pine bark or sphagnum peat moss as the primary ingredient and repot every year or two. There are longer lasting mixes, but I just don't know what you have available in India and don't want to get started on that right now. Losing fruit from transplanting is pretty normal. If you just pick up the root ball and plunk it into a larger pot and fill around it you likely won't lose fruit, but if you remove the dirt from the roots (you should) and then place it into a decent growing medium you will see some shock and the fruit may well abort. Just how it goes.

Asrar: Your question does not have an easy answer. First, MOST citrus do grow 'true' from seed. By true, I mean they are essentially 'clones' of the parent plant. Most lemons do, grapefruits, oranges, mandarins do. But some DO NOT...such as Meyer lemon, pummelos, Minneola tangelo, Temple oranges, Clementine mandarins, and a few others. Don't quote me on which ones. You can do a search in this forum and find out. Malcolm Manners gave a list here once. Second point: Seedlings of many citrus have a very long juvenile period -- for example grapefruits require up to 10 to 14 years before they eventually put out the 'mature' wood that is capable of blooming and bearing fruit. By this time plants must get quite large (maybe over 14 feet high). Key limes, calamondins, and perhaps kumquats take much less time - perhaps 3 to 5 years from seed. Of course all this depends also on the growing conditions. Optimally, in the ground in Florida with great year-round weather - they take fewer years to bear. In a pot in the cold Northern US, they can take many more years - or maybe never. Also, many oranges and lemons for example are extremely thorny from seed. I mean we're talking 3-inch or longer thorns! Only the older mature growth tends to have shorter thorns. Because of this 'juvenility' problem (as well as root disease issues), many citrus (scions from mature wood) are grafted onto a hardy rootstock. This imparts not only a bit of hardiness but also disease resistance to the scion, and assures that you will get fruit in just a few years (vs the many, many years from seed). It also assures that the exact variety will be propagated in the cases where that particular variety won't grow true from seed. I'm hoping this helps you understand why it's not a simple answer to your question. This post was edited by dave_in_nova on Wed, Jun 25, 14 at 9:31