Earlier this year, on a whim I decided to fish a couple of lemon seeds out of the sink and plant them up in a pot to germinate and grow. The seeds were from lemons we’d bought at the supermarket and they were just normal, unwaxed lemons, they may have been at reduced price.

There was no special treatment for preparing the seeds and a few weeks after they were planted, two out of three seeds germinated and produced a pair of lemon seedlings. They were out in the full sun for the summer and I occasionally watered them and potted them on one or twice. I tried to give them the Mediterranean climate of hot and dry as best I could in the UK. Since they tended to grow as a single vertical shoot, I pinched the tops a few times to encourage them to bush out.

They’re inside for the winter now and look rather nice on the window sill when the sun shines through. I’m not sure why I planted them in the first place as the chances of these plants producing a good crop of edible lemons is rather low. Instead, Meyer Lemon is a very popular variety as they seem to be dwarf, good cropping and hardier – much easier to grow and get a crop from than “normal” lemon trees.

When my two lemons begin to get unwieldy and don’t pay their way with a crop of fresh lemons, I may swap them out for Meyer Lemons, unfortunately, it seems to be very difficult to get the seeds as the plants themselves are somewhat expensive.