The one thing people mess up with their indoor lemon trees

I keep seeing posts where people complain about their indoor citrus dropping fruit or leaves, and I finally noticed something specific everyone seems to miss. It's not about watering or light, it's about forgetting to hand pollinate. I mean, indoor lemon trees don't have bees or wind to do the job for them, so if you just let the flowers sit there nothing happens. I watched three flowers fall off my Meyer lemon tree before I figured out I needed to take a tiny paintbrush and gently swirl it inside each bloom. After I started doing that, I got four baby lemons forming within two weeks. My tree sits in a south facing window in my apartment near downtown Austin, and it gets maybe 5 hours of direct sun a day. Has anyone else run into this or found an easier way to get fruit set going indoors?

2 comments

2 Comments

maryt629d ago

like I'm applying mascara to flowers" - nails it, I was doing the same thing.

anderson.david9d ago

Everyone seems to miss" - yeah, no kidding. I spent three months yelling at my "infertile" lime tree before my neighbor saw me doing absolutely nothing to the flowers and asked if I'd ever heard of a paintbrush. My bad for assuming nature would just handle its business inside my dry apartment. Now I sit there every morning with a little brush like I'm applying mascara to flowers. It's kind of calming actually, until you sneeze and blow pollen everywhere and your cat looks at you like you've lost your mind.