Tim, I bought a Meyer lemon and a Satsuma orange this past spring. They are in large containers, and the orange "tree" has a large number of oranges on it, but the lemon has only five lemons. I obviously cannot offer advice about how they will do in the future, but I am loving the way they performed this summer.

How long does it take for your citrus to appear, and ripen?

Here's a pic of the plant and the planter I used.

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Thanks!

Tim

My Meyer lemon is in a very large fiberglass container, which I have had for several years now. We bring it in, if it gets below 25 degs. then put it back out when it warms back up, in the winter.

I don't use the garage. I put mine in the hall in my house.

While I don't have orange at the moment, I have had them in the past, and they do fine outside, but the insects get to them inside.

My fruit appeared soon after the blooms. They have NOT ripened as yet ..... still waiting to see how long that will take. The oranges seem to be hanging in clusters. I will put mine in a plant room for winter .... it has skylights and windows, so they should get plenty of sunlight.

I have a Mexican lime, Meyer lemon and satsuma orange. They were all in bloom when I bought them this past Spring, and all set fruit. I should add, that when I bought them it was still very cold outside and I had them sitting on top of the dryer by the back door in a very bright location, but I used a q-tip to fertilize the flowers on all of them since there were no bugs in the house to do it.

When the weather warmed up enough I transplanted them into some large terra-cotta pots. I mixed up lava sand, greensand, compost and perlite to plant them in. All have done really well, except the terra cotta pots dry out so fast that I have had to water nearly every day. That's not a big deal except that I wanted to use rain water and it has been so dry this summer I have had to use tap water several times. We have a well and a water softener system that uses salt and I didn't think that would be good for the fruits.

I had a little greenhouse built this year so will be bringing the trees inside when the weather turns cold. I'm not sure when the fruit ripens, but all of them are getting pretty large now. The lemons are about 3", the limes and the oranges slightly smaller. I guess when the lemons and oranges are ripe the limes should be ripe too.

Right now I have 14 oranges, 15 limes and 11 lemons. So far none of them have dropped any fruit. And if my little grandson doesn't pick any of them (he says 'ball' and points to them all the time) it will be fun to see how they taste. I'm wondering how, or if, the flavor of the fruit will be affected by the soil mixture that I used. I looked in the citrus forum when I first got these guys but didn't see anything in particular about soils. Most of the posters there live in climates where they can plant their trees in the ground. I based my mixture on the sandy, gritty texture of Florida soils, but I hoped to add extra nutrients by using lava sand and greensand.

Cheryl

One of my Meyer's lemons has been in a container since I bought it in spring 2006. It comes inside for winter and we get 10-12 wonderful lemons. In 2007 a second Meyer's lemon went in the ground next to the house wall and last fall I bought a Mexican lime and have it in a container outside. Meyer #2 and the Lime stayed out all last winter, with sacks made from thermal horticultural fabric over them and a string of mini-lights plugged in.

My NW part of Austin gets colder than my friends in far S Austin - they're growing all kinds of citrus, including the Satsumas and Mexican limes- in the ground with little protection.

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

(don't know if you're interested, but toward the bottom of this blog post you can see a photo of my "Ghost Citrus" during a time of freeze)

Here is a link that might be useful: Ghost Citrus at GBBD

there is a man in lake jackson texas who actually has an agricultural exemption on his home/city lot for raising citrus, almost all of which are in containers,
he holds a citrus tasting "party" sometimes in winter --raises many kinds of citrus there

the citrus guy in lake jackson texas is john panzarella, i googled citrus and lake jackson texas and his "the citrus page" was the first entry
he has a lot of good info on raising citrus in containers, the type of fertilizer you should use and various types that do well

Actually, we have container forum on garden web so it'd be a best place to go to for container gardening. A lot of great info there... My trees grew like weeds in the containers after reading Al's stuff.