Episode 50: Don’t Make These Meyer Lemon Mistakes

About This Episode

In this week’s episode of Ask Grumpy, Steve Bender, also known as Southern Living’s Grumpy Gardener, addresses a reader’s question on Meyer lemons. Plus, Grumpy’s tip of the week.

Question Of The Week

I live in Huntsville, Texas, and the weather has turned cold early. Most of the Meyer lemons are half yellow and half green. How can I ripen my Meyer lemons here in Zone Eight before a frost?

Grumpy Gardener Answer: Meyer lemons. Boy do I get a lot of questions about Meyer lemons. Meyer isn't a true lemon, it's actually a cross between two different kinds of citrus. One's called a citrin and another one's just called a mandarin. And it's very popular. You see it in stores a lot because the fruit is sweet, not real tart like a true lemon is. In regards to your situation, Meyer lemons, the fruit takes a long time to ripen. It can take months and months before it changes to green, from green to yellow. But the thing is, if it starts to get cold outside and you're afraid of leaving this tree outside where it's going to freeze, you can't just pick the lemons from the tree, take them inside, and ripen up on the countertop. They won't ripen off the tree.

So, what you need to do is if you have a Meyer lemon and you're growing it in a place where you get frost and freezes during the winter, grow it in a nice big container and then before your first frost, bring it inside to a bright sunny window and keep it inside for the wintertime and let all the lemons ripen naturally on the tree. That's how it's done.

Tip Of The Week

Prepping The Fall Garden

We're in October, headed towards November, and probably a lot of those plants that look so great in your flower garden or your vegetable garden during the summer, don't look so good anymore. And you're thinking, oh well. You know, time's up for the garden. I'll just go inside, watch football, and come back next spring.

Well, that's not really a good idea.

I got one more job for you. And that is, you need to clean. Clean up the flower or the vegetable garden from all these plants that are kind of withered and looking poorly right now. Or maybe you already did. The reason is if you just leave all this debris there, you might be having disease spores spend the winter in your garden. You may have insects eggs or mite eggs spend the winter in your garden. So, the next spring when you plant new plants, what's there waiting for them? All the diseases and insects. So, if you have a vegetable garden. Let's say you have pepper plants and you have old tomato plants, definitely take all of those plants out. Just pull them up, and you can either throw them on the compost pile, or you can throw them out with the trash. But don't leave them in your garden. For plants that are through flowering and they've done pretty much all their things and they're looking really tired right now and they're not going to bloom anymore, I would cut those things off at the ground. And again, either throw the debris in the mulch, in the compost pile, or just toss it away because you don't want to leave all those pests to have a good time this winter all nice and cozy and then wake up in the spring and destroy your garden.

About Ask Grumpy

Ask Grumpy is a podcast featuring Steve Bender, also known as Southern Living’s Grumpy Gardener. For more than 20 years, Grumpy has been sharing advice on what to grow, when to plant, and how to manage just about anything in your garden. Tune in for short episodes every Wednesday and Saturday as Grumpy answers reader questions, solves seasonal conundrums, and provides need-to-know advice for gardeners with his very Grumpy sense of humor. Be sure to follow Ask Grumpy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen so you don't miss an episode.

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.