I take my lemons very seriously. 

Is that weird? Actually, allow me to be more specific and less weird.

I take the lemons produced from my Meyer Lemon tree very seriously.

Not so weird, right?

Need proof of this lemon allegiance? Check this out from a few years ago:

A special lemon

Truth is, we haven’t harvested a lemon since that day … but that is about to change … in a big way.

Last year I received a ton of great feedback from readers (thank you!) and from a dude I met on an awesome local gardening radio show I’ve been lucky to frequent over the years. Here is a consolidated list of those tips (all pertain to winter indoor care):

• Before bringing indoors, place tree in partial shade outdoors for 2 weeks and then another 2 weeks in the attached unheated garage.
• Spritz the leaves with water every other day to up the humidity.
• When watering, use warm water.
• Place the lemon tree on top of a warming mat.
• Keep the tree away from window/door drafts. I close the curtain to my back sliding door whenever possible as a wind barrier.
• When in bloom, use a Q-tip and just poke it into the flowers.
• Fertilize even if it is the winter.

Now some of these tips may be debatable or unnecessary (based on online research I’ve meticulously conducted) but I cannot complain about the results this year. Currently, I have ten lemons on my tree, including this just-about-to-ripen-monstrosity.

I’ve never seen a lemon this big as it roughly the size of a grapefruit. Now I just pray that it tastes as good as it looks.

Some other current day fruit.

And the first set of buds just emerged within the last week.

Color me giddy with excitement.

Back to that first mother of a lemon I just showed you. I am thinking we will pull it off the tree within the next week. And it is clearly big enough to easily split into four decent sized wedges.

With that in mind, I am challenging my family to come up with a creative use for their quarter of a lemon. I have my plan mapped out already and spoiler alert, it involves sun screen and the PennEast pipeline. The rest of the family is now on the clock.

I’ll be sure to dedicate a post to each of our upcoming lemon plans and challenge each of you to get creative with your own lemons.

Is that weird? Who cares, do it already and let me know what you did in the comments.