I’ve googled it but no luck yet. We have a small lemon tree inside that **McDeath ** started from a lemon seed a couple of years ago. It’s very healthy and strong and beautiful.
Now how can we grow a lime tree? They don’t have seeds, do they? So how would we start one from scratch?
We saw a cool bonsai type one last spring for sale in a mall, and we’re still kicking ourselves for not buying it. However, it would be MUCH cooler to start one on our own.
Any help?
S.
Limes have seeds. But it is a lot easier just to go to a nursery and buy a dwarf lime tree, already started. 
Many of the limes in stores are a seedless variety, either a sterile cross (like a mule) or a mutation somebody stumbled across and propagated from cuttings. (I won’t bother trying to look up which.) All I can suggest is trying various suppliers until you find one with seeds. There are still a few seedy ones around.
Even if you find a lime with viable seeds, it might not make a good tree.
I think most commercial and residential citrus trees are the nice fruit producing variety grafted onto a hardier variety rootstock.
My parents had a nice lemon tree that died in some frost. But it grew back from the bottom as those 2-inch diameter lemons with 3 inches of rind.
I grow lemon, lime and orange trees in very large pots. They need insects (bees especially) to pollinate the flowers so that you will have fruit production. BTW, the flowers of the citrus trees smell divine!
I recommend buying a tree as opposed to starting from seed. Check with your local extension office for availability as well as the best varieties for your area. Also, many county extension offices host plant sales that quite frequently include fruit trees.
Is there a problem with cross-pollination b/t the lemon and lime trees? Do you get limey lemons and lemony limes?
Nope! No lemon-limes or orange-lemons. That would be cool though. 
The odd thing about growing citrus from seed is that the seeds are polyembryonic, meaning that each seed can produce several seedlings, not only that, but it is also very common for part of the outer layer of the seed (the name of which escapes me at the moment) to sprout and produce a young plant alongside the seedlings - this plant grows not from the germinal cells (produced by pollination), but from tissue that is genetically identical to the parent plant - so you often get a bunch of seedlings, some of which aren’t actually seedlings, but clones of the parent tree.
Citrus trees from seed are reputed to be hard to bring to bear or even flower, part of this will be because they are growing on their own roots; plants cultivated for fruit are nearly always grafted onto a rootstock that promotes early fruiting.
I bought a Meyer Lemon tree in a pot about six months ago. At the time it had some small green fruit on it, since I’ve had it the fruits have grown a tiny bit larger and yellowed just a tiny bit. How long does it usually take for the fruits to mature? At this rate I won’t have full sized lemons for two more years. 
Also, how do you encourage bees to visit your plants?
Then how does Sprite do it! :eek:
(jk)
I think your Meyer Lemon will be ready to be picked this winter, (ie in December for us gardeners in the Bay Area). As to will you ever get “decent” size fruit from a potted plant, I’m not sure, but speaking from my experience of growing dwarf Bearss Lime (the yellow lime) in a large pot:
The first year, my limes were lil’ puny versions of Bearss Limes, and I had 2 fruits.
The Second year, the fruits were bigger but still smaller than what you see in markets or produce stands, and I had about 10.
The third year (which is the present season), they’re normal-size fruit! And about about 20 fruits! For a 2-foot tall plant! Yay!!
BTW I bought my Lime from Home Depot (they are grafts onto a hardy dwarf rootstock and thus are not trees.)
I don’t know how to encourage bees, but sylphid (sp?) flies also pollinate citrus flowers, and I see those come naturally if I have lots of flowers. So at the next flowering season (spring), just give your Lemon flowering fertilizer (heavy on the P, not so much on the N), so your tree makes lotsa flowers, and the bees & flies will come. Or, you can pollinate flowers yourself. Take a q-tip from flower to flower.
Meyer Lemons tend to ripen from December until April. You’ve got a couple of months to go.
Bees will tend to find their own way into your garden on their own. It helps of your neighbors have flowering plants. You might also want to start a container garden with flowers, as this should help bring them in. I noticed at your house back in August the Crepe Myrtle outside your fence had a good buzz of bees all over it.
All you ever wanted to know about Lemons: Lemon
The fairly large limes you find in the grocery store are Persian limes. Those almost never have seeds. On the other hand, Key limes, or Mexican limes - the little ~1 inch diameter jobs are full of seeds. They grow pretty much true to type and can bear fruit in about 2 years. The trees adapt easily to pots, and stay small. They’re full of thorns! As an earlier poster mentioned, the flowers smell great.
I have a few I grew from seeds from limes I bought at the Dallas (TX) Farmers Market. I’ve seen them locally in Maryland a few times at grocery stores, and occasionally in latino groceries. You could try similar places.
Small fruited citrus do well in pots, but i’ve seen oranges being grown in them as well. A nice variation on lemons or limes is the Calamondin (Kalamansi in the Philippines). It’s a sour fruit that is used like a lemon in the Philippines, but has more orange notes. They should do well in pots as they don’t get huge and the whole plan has small leaves along with the fruits (it also has little to no thorns)
<Trini Lopez>
Lemon tree, very pretty,
and the lemon flower is sweet,
but the fruit of the poor lemon
is impossible to eat.
</Trini Lopez>
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
I am trying to grow a lemon tree. We live in an apartment building and we have a fairly good-sized terrace. I planted a seed and two little plants grew out of it, got rid of one and with fairly minimal care it is about 6-inches tall 6 months after and it looks healthy.
How much can it grow in a pot? How big a pot will I need (right now it is in a half-gallon pot.
You generally don’t want to over pot. If the seedling is root bound in its pot then it’s time to upgrade, but only go up small increments in size. I’ve seen fruiting citrus in pots as small as 5 gallons (I believe). Depending on how sturdy your terrace is you could grow things in pots of very large sizes (such as if your terrace is a rooftop terrace). I’ve seen small trees about 10 feet high in pots that were maybe 2 feet wide across the rim, and about 2 and a half feet tall. These sizes are of course very heavy. With potted citrus you’re more focused on getting fruit than shade or height, so you could keep it as a shrub so picking fruit is easy. Remember the bigger your pot and plant, the more work it’s going to be to repot the thing when the potting soil goes sour and loses its good character.
Remember, with all of that soil, and the pot, and the plant they can be quite heavy. I wouldn’t reccomend growing them in plastic pots as those tend to become brittle after a while, and also they’re just so damned ugly. Terracotta allows air to circulate better than plastic (plus, mineral salts will cause it to “age” and look a lot more natural). If you’d like to move your pot around you can get a moveable platform (they have casters). However I prefer to keep mine on terracotta pot feet.