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[Campo Girl]

The citrus family are beautiful all year round (especially in the winter when they are covered in delicious fruits or fragrant white blossoms) but very susceptible to cold and disease. The specially selected orange and lemon varieties grown for fruit are all grafted to improve their disease resistance.

All citrus trees like moist soil but extremely good drainage - if growing in a pot make sure you have got stones in the bottom of your pot or even a hole.

Standing water will kill a lemon tree, especially if it is in contact with the trunk - I never water my fruit trees straight down the trunk - always a bit further back.

The roots of citrus trees extend beyond the outermost tips of the branches, so for watering you should scrape up two circular ridges, the first 300mm/12in from the trunk and the other 1m/3 ft or so beyond the reach of the branches.

Fill this basin every ten days from early spring to midsummer, reducing the frequency to once every 3 weeks in the absence of rain for the remainder of the year. The water should not stand for more than a few minutes so never provide more than the soil will absorb quickly.

The tree is partly dependent on surface roots so avoid cultivating too deeply within an area equal to twice the extent of the branches.

Established trees should be given a general fertilizer high in nitrogen, at intervals from late winter to early autumn.

Only apply a little at a time since a high concentration of salts in the soil will be injurious. For the same reason, citrus trees are never happy growing in coastal situations. Alkaline conditions call for the application of iron chelate. Big trees can be moved in midsummer. If you do move the tree, pay particular attention to watering!

Lemon are much less hardy than the oranges and will take very little frost, though they mind the wind less. They should fruit and flower all year round.

[Alec]

Those notes were very helpful. I was mistakenly under the impression that lemons should somehow be easier to grow than oranges, but in our garden the oranges are far healthier-looking and prove your point.

I was interested to read in an English gardening book (The Fruit Expert by Dr Hessayon) that there's a variation of the lemon called (in English) the Citron. It's like a very large, very pimply lemon, and is grown primarily to produce candied peel as the peel is very thick. I had never previously known about this, but a local friend has one, which she had always assumed was a normal lemon, in her garden (and incidentally my wife made some excellent marmalade from it). It would be interesting to know what it's called in Spanish.

Alec.