Meyers Lemon was introduced to USA from Asia and later found to be a symptomless carrier of the citrus virus Tristeza. This does not affect Meyers Lemon in any way, but can allow the disease to be passed on by aphids to commercial citrus varieties which are affected. The virus can be eliminated by various laboratory procedures such as heat treatment and shoot-tip grafting. Clean Meyers Lemon was propagated on a large scale in, I think, the 1960's and all old line Meyers should have been replaced with the new 'Improved Meyers Lemon'. Certainly, no old Meyers should now be sold in the USA. There is no difference between 'old' and 'improved' Meyers (apart from the lack of Tristeza). They are the same variety.

I would like to post a followup regarding my lemon tree... First of all, while I think all the advice I got was excellent, it was of course impossible to take everybodies, so in the end I heeded the wise words of Johnmerr, who had so helpfully informed me that I am the one who has to live with the tree, and I did what my instincts told me, which is to re-pot it. I thought that re-potting a tree would take at MOST and hour, but it ended up taking around four, and I'd like to post my experiences there, in case someone is going through the same thing. 1) Timing: It was cold enough so that I couldn't work in a t-shirt and shorts, which would have significantly cut down on the laundry afterwards 2) Materials: I'm a pretty cheap person, so I went for another plastic tan pot, and in the absence of the materials required for a homemade potting mix, I went for a commercial mix. 3) Location: If I had carried the tree down to the common area, instead of trying to re-pot it on my balcony, I would have saved myself hours of misery, because a balcony just doesn't have enough space, and if you're outside, you don't have to clean up as much. So, now to the general experience. I went up two pot sizes to accommodate the tilt I wanted to use. After pruning, the pot looks much too large, but I still prefer the tilted look to the way it was before. My intention was just to break up the root ball a little bit and then plunge it into a waiting bucket of water to kind of sort of wash off some of the old soil, and then to put it in the new pot. This did NOT happen. What happened is, I pulled the tree out of the pot, and the roots were visible all over the outside of the soil, and FALLING OFF, they were so rotten and dried out. When I started to break up the ball, there were whole sections of the roots which were slimy and disgusting, and some were totally dried out.. and I spent alot of time washing off the 'soil' which was pretty much clay, to find out which sections of roots to cut off. Then I had to put the tree in the bucket of water and take a rest and throw out some of that horrible rocky clay. The moral of the story at this point is: ROCKS DON'T MAKE WELL DRAINING SOIL. Really. I can't stress it enough. I thought my soil was well draining, because it looked nice and rocky, but it wasn't. Obviously, when I watered, I was missing a whole lot of the roots. I really regret not taking more effort to make my own mix, because now I'm worried that the new spoil will have the same problems after a while. So anyways, I came back and I started to put it in its new pot. First I added a slope of soil on the bottom of the pot (because I was intending to tilt it substantially) and watered it well... then with one hand I held up the tree while with the other I added soil. Holding up a tree is actual hard work, I would advise having a tree holder helper if you can. In the end I had to stop and restart this process four or five times. Let me tell you, my beautiful balcony was covered with clay, leaves, buds, sweat and tears by the time the tree was more or less inside. But it didn't stay that way. Turns out I hadn't packed in the soil hard enough, and before long, the tree was tilting one way and then the other, and I was left with a corrections algorithm of seeing how it was tilting and adding soil and water. Lather rinse repeat. Then I wanted to prune it (the watersprout was going off WAY in one direction) so thus started a whole new list of new experiences. Mock me if you will, but I live in a small apartment, and I don't own gardening shears. With a steak knife I slowly sawed of all of the offending branches, a process which took around 5 - 6 minutes per branch. Then came the cleaning up. Oh the cleaning! Me having put down newspaper was of no use at all. By the time the cleaning period had started, the newspaper had turned into a soggy staining mess. It would have been 10 times faster if I hadn't put down newspaper. Anyways, we're well into spring over here, and my tree looks ... better? I don't know, it's hard to tell. The problem with the flowers still exists... this tree is making literally thousands of flowers, but no new leaves. There are some leaves which are yellow and falling off (slower than before) and some of the leaves look significantly healthier (glossy, smooth) while others are cracked and dry (probably due to the wind). I hope you all enjoyed my re-potting experience, any advice is warmly appreciated. Mary

Hi Mike You stated the vacuum idea very accurately. I am just suggesting one plant, one month, one vacuuming. Then in spring time lets transplant the tree to gritty mix or 5-1-1 so we go very well from this point on with a tree that otherwise had NO chance. Braun Mike is correct in that you do not want a system that needs the vacuum idea. When I planted my trees I to had way to heavy of mix. My trees suffered and I came up with this vacuum system to pull the trees though the winter to spring when I re planted them. If I had used 5-1-1 or gritty mix my tree would have done very well with no vacuum. My trees grew so well because of the light box and heat It was not the vacuum that worked. The vacuum pulled my trees through what was probably a terminal jam. Mike The only 2 things wrong with my light buckets and hot box is 1) The electric does not pass IBI inspection codes. 2) The garden forum consist almost entirely of people that are flush with money. I work in communities that have residents who work 2 jobs and still rely on soup kitchens to keep from starving. One 5 gallon bucket in a lawn with kale can produce enough greens for one person all year that he/she could NEVER EVER afford at a grocery store $$$$$$$$$$$$. Mike it appears to me that you have NEVER EVER had a REAL problem in your life that amounted to more than an insecure feeling in high school because Joe Sluck's girl friend was prettier than yours. I do greatly respect your tremendous knowledge of growing of plants and citrus trees You trees are admirable. I fear I am Preaching to the wrong group of people in this forum. If there is a few People that I have help with my outside of the bucket thinking then it was worth it to me. There are other forces that are diminishing the citrus forum and it to will come back as we figure out how to correct them. STEVE HAS SPOKEN

Alright guys, time to mix it up. Literally :) My trees are doing good right now, Forecast for this week is thunderstorms today and tomorrow, then hot and sunny for the rest of the week... Soooo, here we go. This is what I have to work with. I need help figuring the proportions. 1. Farfard Custom Mix. It's quite a bit finer than the 52 they were supposed to send, but oh well, what's done is done and this is what I have. To help with the coarseness, I bought coarse perlite: and finally, bark: So, there you are, Meyer lemon gurus. How much of what would you add to that Farfard mix? As always, thanks for the help and guidance :) Atheen