Lemon trees do great in Iowa, but you need to bring them inside for winter. I use Meyer's lemon.

There's lots of information regarding fruit and vegatable gardening available through Iowa State University Extension, some of it online, some of it in books and leaflets. They're conservative, you can be successful with some risky things if you site the plants carefully. Recommendations for some fruits will depend on where you are in Iowa. I grow peaches, sweet cherries, pears (Asian and European), apples, plums, pawpaws, medlars, figs, strawberries, rasberries, blueberries, saskatoons, apricots, currants, gooseberries, elderberries,...and some other stuff. Most of it does pretty well with little care. I love the variety as much as the fruit, and a lot of it is just for fun. It all depends on what you want and what you've got to work with. Welcome to the gardening world!!!

wow thats great. well iam in iowa city, which is 2 hrs away from AMES(iowa state university). well as far as i know lemon trees take like 2 years to start making the fruits? Are myer's lemons ready to fruit?
thanks for the great info!

You can probably find them locally in pots already in fruit, a person might wish to call around. There are a number of online sources as well that are likely cheaper (an example is 'briteleaf'). They tend to set too many fruit even without hand pollination for me, if your plant needs to establish I'd probably remove all but half a dozen fruits the first year or so. In the house the blossoms may need hand pollination, using a little brush, as there may not be enough insects. Ours spends winter in the greenhouse and there are enough bugs there to do the trick. They LOVE to go outside and get serious sun for summer, do that if you can. The bigger the pot the bigger the tree, a 10 gallon pot for an established tree is a reasonable compromise IMHO.

nice, that kind of answers the question i was going to ask. i was gonna ask if i should have it on a pot or in the ground. i guess a pot will be the best deal. i can just have it on my balcony. i will online for stores near by. i don't know alotabout hand pollination, but i guess i will learn on it when i get the tree :D
thanks again

For what it's worth, I used a little camel hair artists brush, stuck it handle-down in the dirt so whenever a blossom looked like it needed a little pollen the brush was there.

lol sounds good. i called the store today they said they will get the shipments in about 2 weeks. but ofcourse iam alittle inpatient and want the tree fast. so i looked online, started one ebay first, some young plants were like for $20. then into big sites where the tree was $99. i don't know what was the big diffrence, but here is the ebay link
http://cgi.ebay.com/Fabulous-Meyer-Lemon-Tree-Fruit-Bloom-Sz-Citrus_W0QQitemZ7758715435QQcategoryZ519QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem