Fruit & edible · North Texas care guide
Citrus × meyeri
Nursery Pro tip: Grow it in a pot, roll it into the garage on freeze nights, and pick lemons in December.
A true lemon tree you can grow on the patio — glossy leaves, intensely fragrant white flowers, and thin-skinned, sweeter-than-grocery-store lemons from fall into winter. Grown in a pot here so it can come inside for freezes; 4–8 ft, and it often blooms and fruits at the same time.
Full sun, eight hours, outdoors from April to November; a sunny south window or a bright garage for winter. Grow it in a large container with fast-draining citrus or cactus mix — never in the ground here.
Spring. Pot it one size up from the nursery container, with the root ball's top level with the mix, in a pot with real drainage holes. Don't over-pot; citrus resent a huge volume of wet soil.
Deeply when the top two inches are dry — roughly every three or four days in summer heat, much less indoors in winter. Let it drain fully; a saucer of standing water will rot it. Inconsistent water causes fruit drop.
A citrus fertilizer with micronutrients every four to six weeks from March through September, none in winter. Yellowing leaves with green veins mean it wants iron and micronutrients.
Light shaping after harvest. Remove any shoots coming from below the graft — those are rootstock and will take over. Thin a heavy fruit set on a young tree so the branches don't break.
Move it inside below about 32°F, and give it a few days in a shaded spot to transition each way so it doesn't drop its leaves in protest. Scale, mealybugs and spider mites are the indoor pests — check the leaf undersides and treat with horticultural oil. The thorns are sharp.
A patio or poolside pot on its own, near a door where you'll brush the leaves and smell the blossoms.
Written for Rockwall's black clay, heat and winters by the Landscape Source team. Every yard is different — bring a photo by, or ask LS-Ai, and we'll tailor it to your spot.