In my limited experience (I planted my in ground Meyers in 2016), Meyers will hold on the tree for 3-4 months. I have read other lemons will not hold nearly as long.

If you have more fruit than you can use, you can freeze it for use when the tree does not have fruit. I freeze both Meyer lemons and Bearss limes. When I want to use them, I microwave them for 10 second intervals until they are sufficiently defrosted. If I want to use the zest, I zest before defrosting. I store frozen citrus fruit in freezer bags or Foodsaver bags.

You can also juice into ice cube trays. I generally only pick my Meyer as needed, and they have fruit for months.

Lars just freeze them whole ?

Yes you can do that, too.

I always freeze them whole, and they are very easy to juice when defrosted. Also, it is less work to freeze them whole, and it saves the zest, in case you want to use that also. I always label the package with the date before putting it in the freezer.

That's so cool. I didnt know you could freeze them whole. Ive been putting my lemon or Buddah's hand zest into little lemon ice cubes then putting those into ziplocks. I always feeze up a bunch of blood orange ice cubes that way too. More work lol. I am going to try freezing a whole Buddahs Hand and see what happens lol.

You can freeze hot peppers whole to use for sauces or cooking. Just wash and let dry, then freeze.

I've never frozen chilies - I either preserve them with salt and vinegar or dehydrate them. I don't think dehydrated citrus would ever be the same as frozen citrus, but then I've never tried it.

I do freeze whole sapote fruit, and that works well also, but I dehydrate apples. I think juicier fruits are better when frozen, such as citrus. I prefer frozen mangoes to dehydrated mangoes, but I do like both. Unfortunately, I no longer have a mango tree.

Good info on the Sapote fruit. The other tropical fruit trees I have are Starfruit (I slice into stars and freeze to use in drinks etc) , Longan, Dragonfruit, pink guava, monstera deliciosa, bananas, and several young Jackfruit trees. I have never tried freezing the Longans. I wonder if I would have to remove the tough outer shell and large seed.

I get Rambutan from the local farmer's market every year but have never tried freezing any yet.

Just this past weekend, i harvested a dozen meyers for consumption... and found one from last year's crop hanging. It looked its age, but was still juicy and tasted just fine.

John Merrifield: thank you for mentioning that leaving them hang too long could limit next year's crop.

I'm managing to give away a lot of the fruit... two at a time. People seems to like getting one or two or even three, but not a dozen. ;-) This year each lemon seems to be quite large and so makes an impressive gift.

I freeze my meyer juice in cubes as well. You'd have to have a lot of freezer space for whole fruit. Easy to toss a cube into the blender or pan for sauce too. I also tend to leave them on the tree for a very long time.

Side note - every chili I've ever frozen has lost all heat on thawing. Anyone else notice that? I grow citrus, tomatoes and chilis. I freeze all of it but the chilis mostly just for taste. If I want heat, it has to be fresh!

Kelly,

Chilis do much better dried.... I have never tried, or even thought of freezing them. I only grow jalapenos and chiltepes.

Our ghost peppers didnt lose any heat, thats for sure lol.

I recently saw some videos of a guy ( a seller or grower perhaps) tending a giant pile of dried chilies and they were tons of rats in them! From now on I am only using my OWN dried chilies lol. I shudder to think of all the tamales I've made with the store bought dried chilies over the years.

Sultry_jasmine_nights that's so gross!!

Here ya go lol

https://youtu.be/6PqeU8Hirno

It is a known fact that rats are very clean and never go to the bathroom in their home or food supply.

Steve

Ok you can have them then lol.

I think the local fried chicken joint might like to have them.