Gardening Tip for the Broke #3
This past summer I have been *obsessed* with lemons. So much so I started to look into how to grow my own lemon tree at home, so here I come sharing my findings with you.
First and foremost, growing lemon trees from seeds is a LONG process. If you want your own lemons sooner rather than later, go to a tree nursery to pick one up for yourself or get a graft from someone.
Second, when deciding to grow lemon trees from seed, you have to keep in mind that not all the seeds will end up in fruitful trees, and those that do won't always have good tasting fruit. If you really want good tasting fruit from your struggle, do the same as above because its not fun to find out after 3-5 years that your tree is fruitless or has bad tasting fruit.
Okay, onto how to get saplings from seeds in a v low effort way!
Extract the seeds from the fruit (I usually do this while squeezing out lemon juice for lemonade/limoncello)
Check which seeds are viable: fill a glass with water and one by one drop the seeds in. Any seeds that float won't sprout, those that sink have the chance to.
Take the viable seeds out from the glass. They will be slippery and have a goo-like film on them. We need to take this goo off. The best way is to pop the seeds into your mouth and suck on them like a sweet until all the lemon taste is gone. Alternatively, give them a good scrub with a paper towel.
Take a plate, cotton ball*, and shot glass. Wet the cotton ball and place it onto the plate, place a few seeds (I usually do 3-6 seeds) onto the cotton ball, cover the cotton ball with the shot glass. (You can put multiple cotton balls onto the plate, each should have their own shot glass).
Place the plate on top of the fridge and wait.
*I usually use two cotton pads which I rip up and bunch into a ball and it works perfectly as well.
The first time I did this method, I did it a day before leaving home to travel for a month. When I came back most of the seeds had sprouted and were ready to put into soil.
My current batch has been on the fridge for a few weeks now but I haven't had a peek at it in a week or so but have seen some sprouts appearing last I checked.
I've found that seeds from lemons at my local veg shop are bigger and seem to sprout more often, but supermarket lemon seeds have also sprouted!
I plan to try doing this with limes next and will keep you updated.
Happy gardening!
