Overwintering Lemon tree

In the shed they should be ok and its probably easiest!, as they will live in the dark, or in a room with no direct light on them in cold conditions with no problem, they will go dormant so shouldnt need watering, they should be fairly dry, they wont actualy go fully dormant as the fruit will keep ripening especialy if its cold, cold isnt a real problem , frost is, frost will kill all citrus there is no frost hardy citrus ( there is a non citrus citrus the poncirius trifoliata /jap. bitter orange but its not realy citrus and can grow outdoors in uk all year round)

But they look good in the winter, with the fruit ripening and you wont see them in the shed!, they will do fine in an unheated room in the house , again aslong as they get no direct sun on the leaves if cold, and as long as humidity isnt too low

If they get direct bright light on the leaves then you need to be sure the roots are a minimum of 70-75F by using a heater mat , its the best way of stopping them dropping the leaves to use a heater mat, then they will grow far better due to longer growing season

You can get away with keping them outside, but i wouldnt recomend it , allsorts of gardening companies sell hardy citrus plants for outdoors in the uk, there are non and they will die! without some mesing round

To keep them outside , you need to waterproof the top of the pot, then christmas lights around the branches and the pot, then bubble wrap ontop of the pot, and then thick frost cloth around the tree, and lift it up off the floor with some polystyrene , i do this with 2 of mine, as they are too big to move, theres a thread somewere about what i did to keep them outside and showing one that got a bit too cold, a young tree would not survive this

Better in the dark in a shed, or the house, or preferably in the light with a heatermat

Calamondins should be fine in the house, eureka not much different, meyer lemon is very cold sensitive , i would use a heater mat as they are harder to keep happy and tend to easily suffer from WLD ( winter leaf drop ), when the leaves fall off you need to have a dry plant and not water it ( unless it drys out too much.... ) as the lack of leaves means the plant will use no water

Thanks Starloc - think I may wrap the big Eureka in fleece and put it in the shed and bring the 2 others inside. I will stick them in the utility room i think. It is quite dark in there though - hopefully not too much of a problem.

This is very interesting, I have tried treating them as house plants in the winter and my lemon did n't like it at all, shed a alarming amount of leaves, must have been the dry air, as it did get over it and has grown well outside this summer.
I was considering trying the unheated greenhouse for my now 2 lemons this winter, but am now wondering if the dark shed option might be better. It's always a bit of a concern hoping they'll survive that dodgy period before spring, when they shed leaves and look a bit dry and lifeless.
I also observed for the first time this year the growth pattern described in books of 6 week cycles, mine had three different phases of new leaf growth throughout the summer, so they really are quite different to other fruit trees.

A tip about taking them in and out of the house, dont wait till the last minute when theres a chance of frost , If your going to keep them in the house, move them to the house when the day and night temperatures are almost the same inside and outside, to prevent shock from the difference in temperature

the main reason for rapid loss of leaves is low root temperatures with light on the leaves, the leaves overheat as the roots arent working below 70F so they cant cool themselves and fall off as they burn, heat the roots in a greenhousend the plants will grow perfectly all year long with s much sun as you can get,

The greenhouse is ok for them with no heating , but you need to put something like fleece over the plant, just draped over to stop direct sun on them, your plant will keep growing slowly in very cold temperatures as long as theres no frost on the plant and no direct sun on the leaves when the plant is cold light is ok but not direct sun, add a heater mat for the roots and they will be fine with light, just not frost

The only time i have had real leaf loss problems inside the house were due to low root temperature or spidermites

I keep mine in an unheated greenhouse with no problems, just keeping them on the dry side and feeding them Bonsai fertilizer once or twice over the cold months. I have this theory that in their natural habitat they would have at least some sun even in winter, and as the days are short, the sun low and sunny days are few and far between, they seem to be able to cope.

Hi

I bought a lemon tree this year and it's my first winter with it. I don't know what variety it is, as I didn't buy it in a garden centre and the label didn't say. I live in the UK, south near London. Winters can be unpredictable but as many will know, we had temperatures down to -10C last winter. So I've brought my lemon tree in from my (unheated) greenhouse and put it into a basement, which is generally cool (probably around 10-12C) but gets an hour of gentle heating from a radiator once a night to stop excessive damp accumulating.

So my lemon tree is now in a cool, dark position for the winter. My question is: do I need to water it?

Yes, it will need watering as it will still transpire. It doesn't hibernate! I don't think it will survive in a dark place either. It still needs light of some sort to provide energy for transpiration and respiration.

In many mansion houses across europe, they put them in the dark in the cellar over the winter, they always have done, they come out in spring and just start growinmg again, they donmt need to be totaly dark, just no direct or strong light at all if cold
they just go virtualy dormant at low temperatures using very very low levels of water, there ok cold unless they have light, if they have light when cold the leaves fall off as they overheat due to lack of root action giving no cooling circulation to the plant

its just like apple trees, there often stored for long periods in fridges by suppliers, they just go dormant till taken out

As with standard growing conditions only water when it needs it, it will use far less in the winter , only ever water when dry a few inches down in the pot, still use feed if you do water it

That does not seem to agree with the advice here http://www.clifton.co.uk/pdf/Citrus.pdf

Or that many great houses had Orangery buildings for winter storage which were not cellars, they had a lot of glass (typrically 75% of sides) for over wintering

most orangeries were built to show off, they were generaly heated and therfore light wasnt a problem in the 18th/19th century they packed manure bags around the pots so it heated the roots as the manure decomosed, the air was still cool allowing the cold hours to give fruiting yet keeping roots warm , you can not have light if the roots are cold , even in a house the roots are normaly too cold unless you go to a heater mat and a griowlight to provide light needed for active growth

have a look here for more info on winter storage and light

Citrus Growers Forum :: View topic - Winter Leaf Drop?

Starloc gave me great advice last winter for my lemon tree and the leaf drop stopped as soon as I put a heat mat under it, It is now back in my conservatory for the winter with heat on the roots.

Starloc, I only have a single leaf on my Bears lime, but my eureka lemon and Naval Orange seem to be doing ok, do you think that an unheated conservatory with verticle blinds closed would be a good idea for the rest of the winter?

I've looked through my 19th C primary sources & can't see any hints of these practises.

The Johann Chr. Volkamer mentioned, is on several forums but is not a quote & I could not trace the primary as yet.

"generally heated" we are talking about an era when there simply was not central heating in houses, so any heating there might have been, such as was found in fruit walls and pinery vineries does not really come close to our ideas of heated. Warmed maybe...

Again on manure beds I would need to see more info on this as I've never seen a mention of this, manure hot beds were often udsed but they depend on a large amount on rotting manure in order to heat, it simply does not work in small amounts. unless you are suggesting bags replaced continuously ?

From personal experience my citrus have always done fine in my orangery, which is nominally heated, but quite cool & definatly light ! So over 5 years so far.

Saying 64F (17C) is too cool a soil temp, isn't going to work in the UK, unless you intend to chuck loads of cash at your citrus. I do worry about importing US practises into the UK, depending where in the US conditions can be very different.

Allowing dry roots to get cold is going to be a problem, I think, as it generally means the water will be drawn out of the plant via the roots.

A small pot I guess is going to be more likely to chill, too much surface arfea to volume.

From yours & others experiance it seems to cure the problem, but I'm not entirly convinced it is the cause of the problem in itself.