File this one in: Things You Never Knew Until You Had Kids (and they made crazy Christmas requests) category

Six year old Luc asked for a lemon tree for Christmas. A LEMON TREE! Isn’t that the sweetest request? He didn’t ask once on a whim, he mentioned it multiple times and wrote it down on lists to Santa whenever he had the chance. While we couldn’t make his dog request come true, asking for a lemon tree was speaking my love language.

I did a bit of research, and learned that you can definitely grow lemon and other citrus trees indoors. The trees are self-pollinating, so you only need one plant, and it isn’t relying upon insects to pollinate… Although, one site recommending shaking the flowers to increase pollination because I guess insects can improve pollination success.

After a bit of research, I ordered a 3 gallon improved dwarf Meyer lemon tree from Citrus.com. Why that variety? The “improved” in its title means that it’s more pest resistant. Dwarf, because I’m looking for it to stay a more manageable size. Meyer because it’s tasty. I went with the larger size since this was a gift, I wanted the tree to have an impact on Christmas morning.

What an impact it had. He could not believe that he got a real tree, and even mentioned that next year he was going to ask for other fruit. Since Christmas, he’s excitedly told so many people about his lemon tree, and each time they do a slight double-take. I really can’t wait until he can harvest the first lemons and turn a few into lemonade. It’s going to blow his mind.

In the month since Christmas, those original blossoms have faded and it looks like mini lemons are starting to grow. The rest of the tree is covered with small buds and some larger ones that are about to open.

The tree was shipped via FedEx, and arrived in beautiful shape! There was one big bunch of blossoms that were open, and they smelled amazing. It was definitely a game of hide-and-seek keeping that thing hidden from the little guy. There were times when I had it soaking up the sun and other times when it was hidden in my closet.

But funny fact – right now the tree’s living in our bathtub. Ha! Why? Well because our Christmas tree is still up. Double ha! And that’s the location where the lemon tree will eventually reside, getting many beautiful and bright hours of southern sun.