What should I do with my lemon tree?

sb44

I bought a lemon tree from Aldi a few months ago but didn't realise how to look after it properly, hence all of the leaves droppped off.

The branches dried and shrivelled.

A few weeks ago a couple of shoots started growing, not knowing much about plants I thought that I should cut off the dried branches so that the plant would direct its energy into growing the new shoots .

However, after being puzzled by the shape of the new leaves ie they were nothing like the original ones, I realise after googling that these new leaves have come from the rootstock.

They look like grapefruit leaves and smell slightly of citrus, maybe grapefruit.

The question is, should I take these new branches off and hope for some new lemon shoots on the upper stem or will the lemon part be dead?

If there is no chance of anything growing from the lemon part should I just let the rootstock continue to sprout new stems just for the greenery and see what it does grow into or give up and bin the plant and buy a new one? If it is a grapefruit, I have read that they take 30 years before they set fruit and I don't like grapefruit anyway, not that I may be here in 30 years :eek:

pawsies

experiment, see what happens

Don't understand why a lemon tree would produce a grapefruit though?

sb44

pawsies wrote: »

experiment, see what happens

Don't understand why a lemon tree would produce a grapefruit though?

But I don't think the bottom half (rootstock) is that of a lemon but a grapefruit.

A._Badger

If it really is only the rootstock that is living then, sadly, I'd throw it. There's no way of being sure what it was grafted onto but it is unlikely to produce anything you would want.

That said, citrus are prone to dropping their leaves and can be revived from pretty terrible conditions, so just make sure the shoot is coming from below the graft before taking drastic action.

Money_maker

But I've always found lemon leaves to be the same as grapefruit leaves. Off to google now...

Money_maker

Yes, they are practically identical (to the untrained eye). What makes you think this was grafted, OP? Most lemons grown on own roots.

sb44

Money_maker wrote: »

Yes, they are practically identical (to the untrained eye). What makes you think this was grafted, OP? Most lemons grown on own roots.

The original leaves were the shape of lemon leaves, the new ones look like this pic below.



I found that they looked like grapefruit leaves and read that some lemons are grafted onto grapefruit rootstock.

sb44

A._Badger wrote: »

If it really is only the rootstock that is living then, sadly, I'd throw it. There's no way of being sure what it was grafted onto but it is unlikely to produce anything you would want.

That said, citrus are prone to dropping their leaves and can be revived from pretty terrible conditions, so just make sure the shoot is coming from below the graft before taking drastic action.

Yes, the shoots are def coming from below the graft. I will give it a few more months now that the temp is warming up (not that it is cold where it is positioned) and see what happens.

Ta.

sb44

Money_maker wrote: »

But I've always found lemon leaves to be the same as grapefruit leaves. Off to google now...

Lemon leaves look to be a normal oval shape, grapefruit leaves go in near the stem and widen out again further down the leaf, as if there are two leaves connected together.

elsien

A._Badger wrote: »

That said, citrus are prone to dropping their leaves and can be revived from pretty terrible conditions, .

I'll have to tell my mother that - she's murdered 3 so far.

DaftyDuck

I have a small citrus forest down here in Kent, even some Aldi ones. Citrus are certainly prone to losing all their leaves, and it's difficult to judge whether it's too much, or too little water. Both have the same effect. Lemons tend to lose leaves rapidly on water stoppage, but regrow when it starts "raining" again... it's the way you force them into flower. You can control the timing of flower, and hence fruit, to coincide with your good weather. Kumquats tend to be more extreme, losing leaf and life simultaneously. Limes don't like losing their leaves at all.

If the shoots on yours are low down, it is likely to be the rootstock. I'm generally a saver of plants, and a Scrooge, so I'd normally tend not to throw any plant out (as my garden and wife will testify), but in this case I'd make an exception.

The problem is the rootstock is unlikely to be a variety that's worth growing, even if you do know what it is... and it may well not be grapefruit. That leaf shape is common amongst Citrus; Seville Orange and Tahiti Lime are growing like that outside right now! If it was a Meyer Lemon, it's possibly growing on its own root (not grafted), so you would end up with a replacement lemon. However, the change in leaf suggests it was on a grafted root (as does the dieback and described regrowth, to be honest).

There's a google docs of leaf form Click Here that has many of the leaf forms in photos.

So, you'll spend a good long time cultivating this bush back to life, and it might turn out to be a grapefruit - and on its own rootstock it will be a tree before it fruits - say 20 feet in size, in ten years time or so! :eek:

Start again, with a known plant, and keep your fingers crossed.

You might be in cheap luck, as Lidl were selling lemon trees last week - smaller ones in boxes, but they were less than a fiver...