GROWING anything at 1000 metres above sea level has its problems, number one being a very short growing season, the other is copping a bout of severe frost, exactly when you don’t want it.
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That bout of frost came a few weeks after my eureka lemons first flowered and the fruits were only about a centimetre or two long.
Frosty reception
The fruit at the base of the tree is fine, those on the outer are withered and dead.
For months I’d been toiling away, making sure that the lemons would be aplenty come winter, and that our production of lemon cordial, curd and syrup would steam ahead.
But Mother Nature is a cruel mistress and now I have only a few very, very healthy eurekas the ones that were hiding underneath the leaves, and a mass of stunted freaks.
The frost and snow we’ve been having this year have also taken toll on my lemonade lemons as well.
A cross between Meyer and a mandarin, the lemonade tree is a thin-skinned variety not really suited to our climate at all. (I won’t name the friend who bought it for us seven years ago.)
If the frost hadn’t hit my eureka buds so early, they’d be surviving a lot better than my lemonades, or my Meyers. The eureka has a thick skin, protecting the flesh inside from damage.
All the fruit at the top of the Lemonade tree has snow and frost damage. Soggy grey patches of rotten skin at the top of the fruit is caused by the flesh underneath freezing and thawing out, over and over again. Once again the fruit at the base of the tree is fine.
This is the first time I’ve had stunted fruit and to avoid it, next year I’ll be covering the fruit well into spring.
