Why I’m a bitter lemon grower
I AM not one for oneupmanship. My life has been more a tale of onedownmanship so I have resigned myself to that status which, together with the fatalistic belief that whatever can go wrong will go wrong - so therefore no-one should be surprised, upset or disappointed when it does - leaves me in a pretty content frame of mind. Most of the time.
But there are occasionally exceptions. There are odd moments when the green goblin of jealousy sits on my shoulder chattering in my ear because someone is doing considerably better at something than I am. And such was the case with the lemons.
Now I have always fancied growing lemons or some other kind of citrus fruit - though lemons were the hot favourites - and a few years ago decided to invest in a couple of juvenile trees.
Especially since the label on them down at the garden centre assured me they would be deliriously happy in my garden’s situation and would, given the proper degree of care, fruit abundantly.
The impression - rather, however, than any actual assurance - was given that so prolific would be the harvest that I should need to set up my own marmalade factory to cope with the surplus, thus laying the path to the flowering of a second career and incalculable wealth. I now realise what a pack of lies growers will concoct in order to sell the plants they have raised and are marketing.
You could see from the outset that those lemons were not happy. We had a garden sheltered on three sides by walls and on the fourth by a high hedge, so in essence as close to a proper walled garden as it was possible to get.
It faced due south. It abutted open fields so the air quality was excellent. It rarely received the full force of gales but on the contrary was caressed by gentle breezes to temper any excessively sultry conditions.
But as I placed the two lemons on the spot I had chosen for them I could almost sense them looking around, taking stock of their surroundings and getting rather snitty about them as if to say “Is this it?”, rolling their eyes and sighing heavily.
Those trees cannot ever claim to have been neglected. I visited them daily. I checked on the moisture levels in their pots, gave them a drink if it was too dry, left them alone if it was damp enough and wiped their leaves if they looked too dusty.
When the cold weather came I moved them into the shelter of the greenhouse but trudged down there every couple of days to inspect them, wondering all the time when all that promised fruit would start arriving.
I went online and read up all sorts of tips about growing and caring for lemons. I avidly scrolled through conversations where regular growers of citrus fruit were comparing notes, announcing successes and warning of pitfalls. From the latter I learned that lemon trees can be rather fickle.
If they get too dry, apparently, they drop their leaves. Ditto if they get too wet. They can’t abide draughts - and drop their leaves. They are susceptible to all kinds of other environmental changes.
I began to suspect that I had bought a load of trouble in the shape of two specimens from the plant world manifesting all the signs of hypochondria.
In the second season outside there were some encouraging signs: fragrant flowers appeared. The garden was stuffed with insect-friendly plants so I figured there would be no obstacle to pollination. Wrong again. Out of the two trees just one tiny fruit eventually set.
I almost put a 24-hour guard on it. My visits to that corner of the garden became more frequent. I scared off any flying or crawling threats to give it the best possible chance of survival. I even considered lighting a few candles to St Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes.
But somehow that lemon hung on. It grew. Slowly rather than spectacularly until it had attained roughly the volume of a golf ball - a lemonshaped one, that is. And promptly dropped. Desperately I sliced it open. It consisted of roughly 90 per cent pith with a tiny centre of flesh: flesh which, for all my squeezing, refused to yield a single drop of juice.
And the next week without notice, without giving any justification and for no apparent reason both trees dropped their leaves and began dying - a process which took no more than a couple of weeks.
So when we moved here nearly two years ago I decided to have another crack at lemon production. The climate is at least a degree warmer than the previous abode, frosts are rare thanks to the maritime climate and the garden faces due south and gets uninterrupted sun all day.
Mrs R noticed some lemon trees on offer from a reputable supplier and ordered three which duly arrived and looked in pretty impressive condition.
This time I was taking no chances, I decided. I would elevate the concept of nurture to previously unachieved levels. Clearly the trees were in need of more spreading room for their roots so I went online to check which size to buy and then ordered several bags of special citrus compost - which may or may not have been any different from ordinary compost, though I had no way of checking. I also invested in two sorts of feed, one for winter, one for summer. And set the freshly repotted trees at the front of the house in locations which would get them all the sun they needed while offering shelter from any damaging winds.
I have to report they have been a success. I have fed them religiously and at the specified dilution of feed to water all year long. They have flourished so successfully I have had to prune them (after reading up on that as well) and they have rewarded me by first flowering and then producing more than 50 fruits between them. Green ones.
Green ones which are refusing to turn the specified lemon colour and these are most definitely lemons rather than limes. After their summer outside I have transferred them to the greenhouse and switched to the winter feeding regime. The lemons are now the size of those you would buy from a shop. Yellow, however, they are not. Whether they are relatives of the pair I had before and word has reached them that I killed off their second cousins I know not. But it looks like a return to St Jude and the candles is called for.
The other day I popped round to our neighbours with a modest offering in the food line but while we were in conversation on the doorstep my eye strayed to the back of his terrace and my sentence remained unfinished. There stood a lemon tree, completely exposed to the elements and positively groaning under a crop of fully ripe, yellow fruit.
I pointed wordlessly. “Oh yes,” he said. “Doing rather well this year. We’ve had lots of fruit off it. Here you are - have these for your gin and tonic” and thrust three fruits into my hand.
I had arrived at his door in a reasonably cheery frame of mind. I shuffled away a broken man. The green goblin had reappeared. The curse of onedownmanship had, with a leaden familiarity, struck again.
The gin was nice, though.