How to plant a lemon at home so that it bears fruit

Growing a lemon at home is a complex and exciting activity that has many tricks. Not everyone knows why and how to plant a lemon planted in a pot, but this procedure allows you to speed up the harvest, improve its quality, or collect several different types of citrus fruits even on a small home tree located on the windowsill.

Benefits of Lemon Grafting

Lemon has a huge amount of vitamins and minerals and has long been valued by people for its benefits. At the same time, a fruiting plant can be grown in an ordinary apartment and harvested several times a year.

Most people get their first lemon tree from the seed left over from eating a lemon. Such a plant develops well, but does not bear fruit for a long time and is called wild. You can wait 10-15 years from it for the first harvest, and sometimes the tree refuses to bear fruit at all

Vaccination solves several problems:

• you can get several varieties of lemon on one tree;
• grafted plant gets sick less;
• begins to bear fruit earlier, fruit quality is greatly improved;
• you can graft a lime or an orange on a lemon tree, they coexist perfectly and develop.

Vaccination at home stimulates fruit formation and makes it possible to get a crop in 2-3 years after planting. Rootstock can be grafted with 2-3 different varieties of lemon or other types of citrus.

Due dates

Vaccination is carried out on the plant in 1.5-2.5 years. Later, the growth and development of the mother plant slows down, and the scion does not take root well. In this case, young branches of the tree are selected for grafting. The best time for vaccination is April-May, it can be carried out until August, so that the plant has time to recover. A graft given on a cloudy rainy day will take root better. The lower the inoculation is made, the shorter the lemon will end up.

Choice of rootstock and scion

A he althy tree is chosen for the rootstock, without damage, with strong roots and crown. A weakened plant must be treated before grafting, monitor the condition of the soil and fertilize it 2-3 weeks before the operation.

For a scion, you need to take material from a he althy tree that has begun to bear fruit. Pavlovsky, Vaniglia, Novogruzinsky varieties are suitable for indoor cultivation. Today, there are more than 100 varieties of indoor lemon, differing in fruit size and taste characteristics.

Required tools

The following tools are required for vaccination:

• a sharp scalpel or a special grafting knife;
• garden var;
• a piece of electrical tape, fum tape or special garden tape;
• a narrow strip of cotton fabric;
• secateurs;
• alcohol solution.

All work is carried out with clean, alcohol-treated inventory. Wash your hands thoroughly to avoid infection of the plant during vaccination. You can get 2 vaccinations, then the likelihood of their survival increases.

Inoculation methods

There are several ways to graft a plant. Each of them has its own characteristics that you need to know about. There are cuttings, copulation and budding.

Cutting

For the scion, choose a small twig with leaves from a varietal plant. Grafting is done in 2 ways: by bark or split.

For the bark

For grafting, you need an adult sprig of a varietal lemon with fully formed leaves. Young branches are not suitable for grafting. Lemon stalk should have 4-5 leaves, which are removed, leaving small petioles. The thorns of the plant are also removed from both branches. The vaccination site is treated with alcohol.

A slanting cut is made with a sharp knife at the bottom of the scion. On the rootstock, a part of the branch is removed with a pruner, which is just above the grafting site, then a part of the bark is carefully cut and folded back on one side.

The cut of the cutting is combined with the section of the mother plant freed from the bark and is tightly fixed with electrical tape or fum tape.The cut on the rootstock, located above the grafting site, is processed with a garden var. To ensure that the grafting site is constantly moist, a cotton cloth can be wound over the fixing material, which should be constantly moistened.

Important: it is necessary to ensure that the cuts on the cutting and the mother plant coincide, and the graft does not move during the fixation of the bandage.

The grafted branch or the whole plant should be covered with a plastic bag to create increased temperature and humidity. The package is tightly fixed at the bottom with twine. The top must be free. This provides increased temperature and humidity, which means better survival.

Split

The stalk is prepared in the same way, but cut obliquely on both sides to make a wedge.

A part of the branch is removed with a pruner to a rootstock above the grafting site, and the branch of the mother plant is split with a sharp knife in the middle to a depth of 2 centimeters. A stalk is inserted into the split with a wedge and fixed with a tight bandage. The grafted branch is covered with polyethylene.

Copulation

This is the same split grafting, the difference is in the diameter of the grafted branches; when copulating, the diameter of the cutting and scion must match.

Budding

For such a vaccination, not a cutting is taken, but a bud of a varietal plant with a small area of bark under it (tongue). Budding is conveniently done with a new sharp blade. At the grafting site, on the mother tree, a T-shaped incision is made in the bark.

Important: care must be taken that the incision is not too deep and does not damage the underlying layers.

The incised bark is gently folded over, the finished kidney is inserted into the bare place, the tongue is tightly pinned with the bark, the graft is fixed with a tight bandage, the kidney is left open.

Post-Vaccination Care

After the operation, the plant is given a warm, bright place, protecting the tree from direct sunlight.Creating a greenhouse effect with high humidity for the grafted twig is a prerequisite for a good survival rate of the graft, and a plastic bag is needed for this purpose.

It is removed daily for airing and the vaccination site is sprayed with a spray bottle.

If on the stem or twig of the scion below the grafted area wild leaves begin to bloom or side shoots appear, they must be removed immediately to provide the grafted seedling with a better supply of nutrients. After the operation, the plant is not fertilized until the sprout is fully established.

Escape appears 2-4 weeks after the manipulations. It needs time to grow and get stronger, so the bag is not removed, making sure that it does not come into contact with young leaves.

After 1.5-2 months, you can gradually begin to accustom him to the usual conditions of detention.First, the package is removed daily for 30-40 minutes, then the time is increased to 1.5-2 hours. After 5 days, the plant is released from the package. If during the day the leaves begin to lose elasticity, put it back in place and give the lemon a few more days.

When it fully adapts to the room temperature and humidity, remove the cloth bandage and fixing tape.

How to know if the procedure was successful

If the cutting or bud remains fresh and elastic during the first 5-7 days after grafting, they have not darkened or dried out, then the grafting was carried out correctly, they are alive, and then everything depends on the care of the plant.

If the operation failed, you need to give the plant a rest, and repeat it after a month. Today in flower shops you can find already grafted lemon seedlings, but growers try to grow it themselves, as purchased plants often die soon after purchase.

Of course, vaccinating on a lemon requires knowledge and skills, but if you carefully study the subject and do everything carefully, the chances of success increase noticeably - after 2-3 years fruiting will begin, and the pet will please the owner with the first harvest to the envy of friends and acquaintances.

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