Why a Key Lime Tree you ask? Why not some other kind of Citrus?
If I'm honest I would have to point to two factors that influenced my decison.
The first would be my newly found love of a certain mexican beer and the prospect of having fresh Limes available to use with said beer.
The second would be my wife who expressed a strong desire to purchase a Key Lime Tree that would allow her to make all kinds of Key Lime goodies. Having experienced a Key Lime Tart made from store brought Key Limes this was easily the overriding driver in the decision.
Like many of my plants to come, the tree started off adorning one of the many display stands at the local Home Depot down the road. It was a small tree with plenty of leaves but minus any fruit, but it looked healthy enough and more importantly at the time, it was small enough to fit in the car. We also purchased a large green fiberglass pot and plenty of soil to put it in. The color of the pot was deliberate, living in a townhome (certainly in Florida) invariably involves a HOA (Home Owners Association) and all of their rules regarding the apperance of the development they look after. Given that I wanted to put the tree and its container in a nice sunlit spot outside the front of the house, I wanted to do so in a tasteful manner that would allow the tree to blend in.
Thankfully it did blend in and after a week or so it started to flower and before long the tree was covered in little white buds. However as I'm sure everyone knows this past winter was a harsh one and while Florida was spared by far the worse of it, we did have numerous cold fronts come through. Despite my best efforts to move the plant inside when the temperature was to drop, all but a few buds fell off the tree and what did grow did not last.
However, Winter has passed and in March of this year my sad little tree suddenly sprang into new life and started flowering like crazy and now come early May.....
As you can see, the tree has not only set all of it's blossom, but many of those blossoms became buds which have now grown into little minature fruits. We gave into temptation and picked a half dozen fruits this weekend and predictably they are still too under developed for baking with although they will no doubt be good enough for a beer now.
In terms of care, the pot itself came with a rubber plug in the bottom of the pot that was soon removed to allow for the the soil to train and I give the soil a good soak every other day. I also add some liquid plant food every other week on a dry day.
I have noticed some ants in the last few days crawling up and down the main trunk and given that I soak the tree's soil every other day I suspect they are coming from the garden soil nearby. They're not damaging the tree of fruit at the moment but if the numbers look like they're growing I may have to try and find some organic way of removing them.
Well thats it for now, I'll keep on watering and feeding and hopefully in a future blog post I can tell you about some 100% home grown baked goodies.
So what is next for my little lime tree, well pretty much the same. Keep feeding and watering it
.
