How To Grow A Meyer Lemon Tree Indoors That Actually Produces Lemons

Lemons are one of the most versatile fruits for cooking and baking, but did you know you can grow them at home?

While most citrus trees need to grow outdoors in warm, humid climates, the Meyer lemon tree will happily grow in a pot in your home.

We’ve been growing our own lemons indoors for years and are happy to share our best tips so you can do the same.

Why Grow Meyer Lemon Trees?

If you’ve never tasted a fresh Meyer lemon, you truly don’t know what you’re missing!

Meyer lemons are sweeter than average lemons and make the most amazing lemonade you’ve ever tasted. The reason you don’t see them for sale in grocery stores very often is that their soft skin makes it harder to ship them without damage.

But you don’t have to buy Meyer lemons when you can grow them. When grown in a pot this tree maxes out around 4 feet tall, which makes it easy to grow in your home.

Growing a Meyer lemon tree is easy as long as you have the right tools and knowledge going into it. This guide will show you all the basics of how to grow your own lemons at home.

Lemon Tree Buying Tips

When buying your Meyer lemon tree, make sure you’re buying from a reputable nursery with lots of positive reviews. If possible, buy your tree from a local nursery so you can return it easily if there are issues. Buying locally also eliminates the stress of shipping the tree to your home.

If you can’t find a lemon tree locally, there are a lot of nurseries online but they’re not all created equal. We’ve bought many fruit trees online and only about a quarter of them have ended up being healthy and long-lasting. We have found Stark Bros to be a very reputable company that sells healthy trees. 

It pays off to buy the biggest and oldest tree that you can afford and will fit in your home. Because it takes Meyer Lemon trees several years to produce fruit, buying an older tree will give you a major jump start on growing fruit. You might even get to harvest lemons in your first growing season! 

The first lemon tree we bought was only a foot tall and it took many years before it started producing fruit. The second tree we bought was several years old already and was flowering on arrival. It was well worth the extra expense to save years of caring for a non-fruiting tree.

Light

One of the most important factors in growing a lemon tree indoors is providing proper light. Fruit trees love to soak up the sun, so whether you’re growing your tree indoors, outdoors, or a mix of both, you’ll need to make sure you’re providing enough light.

Indoor light

The very best place for a lemon tree to grow is outdoors, where it gets lots of sun. Most of us, unfortunately, don’t live in a region where we can grow lemon trees outside year-round, so we have to make do with an indoor arrangement. To give your lemon tree the best chance for success, place it in a south facing window so it gets bright light for the majority of the day. 

We also hang a grow light over our lemon tree and use it every day to add supplemental light. If you want to make it easy on yourself, plug the grow light into an automatic timer so it will come on in the morning for a few hours and in the evening for a few hours. 

We set our timer to turn the grow light on from 5 am to 8 am, then it shuts off during the day when the natural light is coming in and turns back on again from 5 pm to 8 pm. This system has worked well for us during very dark winters in Western New York, but you may need to adjust the timings for your own region and preferences.

Outdoor light

If possible, move your lemon tree outside when the weather is consistently staying above 50 degrees. No matter how grand your indoor plant setup is, it can’t compete with actual sunlight, fresh air, insect pollinators, and wind. The healthiest thing for your lemon tree is to spend at least a few months per year outdoors. 

Lemon trees prefer full sun, eight hours per day is best but they can also survive in partial shade. Find the sunniest spot in your yard to park your lemon tree for the summer and it will be so happy!

When we move our lemon tree outside in the summer, we do so gradually. Since it’s spent many winter months indoors it needs to adjust to the new environment slowly. This hardening-off process ensures your tree won’t get stressed by the sudden change. Stressed lemon trees can lose a lot of leaves and attract nasty pests pretty quickly, so it pays off to go slow. 

We like to start off by putting the tree in a shady part of the yard for the first week. Once the tree is acclimated to the shady spot, we move it to partial sun for half of the day and repeat that for another week. After that, you’re free to put your lemon tree in full sun (if you have it) full time.

Soil and Potting

Citrus trees purchased at nurseries usually need to be re-potted right away. The nursery should supply you with instructions for care, including how and when to re-pot the tree. In case they don’t, it’s generally a good idea to get the tree into a roomier pot during the first week. Most plants purchased from nurseries are root-bound and ready to size up.