Lemons trees are mostly grown or propagated from grafting/budding, some are also grown from seeds too. Purchasing from most fruit nurseries in Nigeria and other countries might be quite expensive, you can also grow and propagate them from stem cuttings. Here I will guide you on the way to effectively grow your lemon tree from cuttings at home or in your backyard.
Materials needed:
- Lemon Cutting: Use your pruning scissors or cutter to cut a branch of the lemon tree you wish to grow, don’t get your cutting from a pre-matured stem, cuttings from a few months to a year old-growth are ideal.
- Poly bags: Get a poly bag for planting the cutting.
- Soil: Get loamy soil to fill the poly bag
- A Garden knife or grafting knife is required.
- pruning scissors or cutter.
- Rooting hormones (optional)
Steps to plant your lemon cutting
Take a cutter and cut out the branch to grow from your lemon tree, trim the leaves on the cut branch to reduce the loss of moisture from the branch. Use your knife to scratch the bark of the lemon at the end side of the branch to expose the cambium layer.
Fill the poly bag with loamy soil, a black poly bag is ideal as it absorbs heat from sunlight which helps in the root development. Now you plant the prepared lemon cutting inside the poly bag filled with soil, also for faster root development you can dip the cutting in a rooting hormone powder before planting. Don’t worry if you don’t have rooting hormone available it will still germinate.
Finally, keep the planted lemon cutting in a cool environment without any direct sunlight for up to three weeks to enable it to form a callus and develop roots, and water it when never the soil is getting dried up. Allow it to grow for three months and develop new branches before transplanting it to the ground.
