If it quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, to me it is a duck. The Meyer also is not a "true" lemon; but it is the best lemon in the world; and also the juiciest of all the citrus. My Meyers are 70% juice by weight. I would be interested to know the % for the Ponderosa.

Very pretty, John, and thanks for sharing!

Patty S.

Sweet fruit! Love the texture, John.

Josh

My grandmother grew a ponderosa lemon for about 30 years in St. Louis. It spent the winters indoors and only grew outside for about 6 months of the year. Every summer when we visited she would have one or two ripe lemons. Some years when she had two large lemons, she made lemon meringue pies. Other years when there was only one, she'd give us kids shaved ice with lemon and sugar drizzled on top. Nothing was more delightful on a hot summer day.

My Mother won the blue ribbon at the California State Fair 5 years in a row, until she got bored... with her lemon meringue pie... Her secrets??? her famous crust made with lard... and Meyer lemons!! It is one of the reasons I became a fan of Meyer lemons... her lemon lassier cookies, also made with Meyers was her grandchildren's and great grandchildren's all time favorites... I have the recipe for the lemon lassies; but it has never been worth the energy for me to make them.

Allrighty, here are the stats for juicing the Ponderosas.

I picked six medium, to large lemons, weighed each on a laboratory-grade scale, juiced them, and weighed the juice.

The six lemons weighed 2,605 grams.
They gave 995ml of juice, or about 4 and 3/8 cups.
Total juice weight was 1,150 grams.

Percent juice by weight is 44%.

The big lemon in the photograph above contained less juice than any of the other five smaller lemons I picked. It had a much larger air space in the center between the sections. It also had the largest number of seeds, 53!

The average number of seeds was 42.
The average juice volume was 0.73 cups, or just under 3/4 cup.

I'll put in a plug for the juicer I used. It's a Cuisinart, Get Juiced, reamer style juicer. It has a variable size seed/pulp strainer and it has a spin cycle to extract the juice from the pulp. I've used it fairly hard for about a year now and it has held up.

So Johnmerr, I'm even more impressed with the percent juice in the Meyer lemon.....if I ever decide to compete with your crop, it will have to be by volume or for seediness :>)

My typical batch of lemonade is 9-10oz of juice from 5 Meyer Lemons. I tend to pick the smaller/rounder lemons as they seem to taste better. That trees owner picks them when they have become much larger and more than twice as long as wide with a very smooth skin. He says he doesn't care for the taste and I have to agree. At that point they get a "muddy" taste but they clearly make a huge amount of juice.

Interesting that the person that is buying his house with 80 mature citrus could not care less about the trees.