Crud, my photos disappeared!!? Anyway, I'm concerned about the size of the drain hole. It's smaller than a quarter. Also, what experience do you have with glazed pots and gritty mix?

I am not sure if it is enough drainage, but otherwise it would be okay. Is there some way you can drill extra holes in the bottom? You could also cut out a circle of screening, and lay it in the bottom to keep soil in.

Good job at collecting those ingredients! (I had a hard time with that)

~palmsandsnow

I am cautiously considering using a masonry drill bit to enlarge the hole. I always put some type of barrier over the drain hole, like insect screen.

I had to go three places to get my three ingredients for the mix, and only had to order the cherrystone online. Crushed granite is hard to find locally in small quantities.

Can't see how tall is your pot; IMHO long as it's taller than it is wide should be fine for lemon.

Meyers here are grafted, my latest baby is on Troyer.

Lemons like water though... mine's in more a 5:1:1 than real gritty. My plastic pot is about 15-20L with a reservoir of about 1L at the bottom, usually doesn't need replenishing between rains unless very hot. Soil mass is tall enough that hopefully all the perched water sits below the small tree's rootball

Methink the more sun it gets the more wetness it can tolerate; by time rootball has grown big enough to reached wetter bottom hopefully it'll just live with it. No plans to uppot ever.

The pot size is 12-15 gallons -- taller and wider than the 5-gallon nursery container.

A citrus successfully grown in a container will become top heavy and fall over if subject to wind. If your container is clay with gritty mix which is normally quite heavy you should be OK. Gritty mix is the only mix I would use for a container citrus.

No worries about the size of the drain hole, Sue. Even 1 dime-size hole is more than enough. The size and/or number of holes have no meaningful bearing on how much water drains from the pot after irrigation - only on how fast it drains. Plants really don't care if it takes 1 vs 10 minutes for the pot to stop draining, but they do care about how much excess water the pot holds after it stops draining. You'd have to work at over-watering your plant in a well-made gritty mix.

Al

Al,

Thanks for the feedback. I read more after I posted that question, and then began to think the glazed pot might be more of an issue than the drain hole. It is glazed inside and out. I found a thread from about five years ago where you suggested that a standard red clay pot would provide better gas exchange than plastic, and I inferred that it would also be better than a glazed ceramic one.

See, the problem is that your words live forever on the Internet!